{
  "abstract": "Multi-dimensional coastal indices such as mangrove health indices aggregate tidal-range, mean higher-high water (MHHW), and tidal-anomaly sub-scores. Validating these sub-scores requires in situ tide gauges that low-data coastlines lack within 100 km. Global tide models such as EOT20 give accurate coastal tidal constituents but no tidal-anomaly metrics or per-source error terms for a composite-index budget. Such metrics would capture weather-band non-tidal variability driving coastal flooding and ecosystem exposure. We present MUSE (MUlti-Source tidal Estimation) as a virtual tide gauge combining University of Hawai’i Sea Level Center (UHSLC) harmonic analysis from nearby stations with EOT20 constituents through a basin-friction-aware inverse-distance-weighted ensemble. MUSE adds tidal-anomaly metrics from the UHSLC residual and per-source error components that EOT20 lacks. Seven complementary tests assess the protocol at five pilot and three development sites across four continents. They comprise leave-one-station-out cross-validation (LOO-CV), four baselines, a Diebold–Mariano test, sensitivity, subsample analysis, bootstrap confidence intervals, and adversarial tests. MUSE returns finite anomaly standard-deviation estimates while the EOT20 anomaly is zero by construction, with LOO-CV root-mean-square errors of 0.020 to 0.095 m. A worked example indicates that this error term carries 63 to 90% of an illustrative index’s variance at the four coherent sites, a component no model-only budget supply. EOT20 alone is most accurate for range and MHHW at every site when extracted at the validation stations, with root-mean-square errors of 0.01 to 0.26 m for range and 0.01 to 0.11 m for MHHW. The independent Bitung gauge check passes two gates and fails two. Four sites pass the 0.50 m tidal-range threshold and pass/fail is consistent with a post-hoc station-coherence explanation rather than with station count, although eight sites limit confirmation. At the five sites where spatial-block cross-validation is testable both the station-level and block-level evaluations fail the 0.50 m gate. MUSE complements EOT20 by completing index error budgets rather than improving tidal-range accuracy.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Prasetyo Wibowo"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ajj4b8derssw5.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.31223/x56z32",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "ajj4b8derssw5",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/15307/",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "bepress",
      "Earth Sciences"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Oceanography"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "coastal index"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "tidal anomaly"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "tide model validation"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "uncertainty quantification"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "ungauged coastline"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "virtual tide gauge"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1904|Coastal and Marine Dynamics"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7215043087",
  "pdf_url": "https://eartharxiv.org/repository/object/15307/download/26527/",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-01",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ajj4b8derssw5.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:39Z",
      "native_id": "15307",
      "source": "eartharxiv",
      "url": "https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/15307/"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "earth",
      "origin": "bepress:Oceanography",
      "subfield": "oceanography"
    }
  ],
  "title": "MUSE: virtual tide gauge reference estimates and error budgets for coastal index validation at ungauged coastlines",
  "title_text": "MUSE: virtual tide gauge reference estimates and error budgets for coastal index validation at ungauged coastlines",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:39Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ajj4b8derssw5",
  "venue": "EarthArXiv",
  "versions": []
}