The department of Marine Physics was established by the council of King Abdul-Aziz University, Jeddah through resolution No. 2 on June 12, 1978.
The curriculum of the department includes diverse courses to provide the student with broad background of physical oceanography. These include the understanding of physical properties of sea water and their application to marine survey; vertical and horizontal scales of motion; upwelling processes and their dynamics; vorticity; mixing processes and the formation of water masses.
The department understands the importance of coastal marine environment and the courses include the dynamic of costal processes; waves, tides; ocean currents and their effect in coastal areas on navigation, dispersion and distribution of municipal and industrial waste.
The motion of the sea is basically the result of interaction between the ocean and the forces that act on it from above subject to the internal and boundary constraints. The air-sea interaction courses deal with this subject. Courses are designed to study sea level variation; global warming ad its effect on the sea level changes; extreme climatic events and thermodynamics of the oceans.
The students are given practical training in collecting oceanographic data, their analyses and interpretations. The exploitation of the sea resources requires near real-time oceanographic data in addition to data from moored buoys instrumentation. Remote sensing course is designed to meet this requirement.
Numerical modeling courses help to understand the dynamic behavior of the ocean to help protect coastal and other marine structures.
The department courses also emphasize on the energy from wave action, tides, difference in sea water temperature and salinity in coastal and open sea in addition to different process of desalination.
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