Dubai

Dubai is the second-largest of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates, fronting the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula's eastern shore between Abu Dhabi to the south-west and Sharjah to the north-east. The tide here is a moderate mixed semidiurnal signal modulated by the partially enclosed geometry of the Gulf basin: mean range at the Port Rashid gauge inside the dredged Khor Dubai inlet is about 1.4 metres, climbing past 2.0 metres on the largest spring tides and dropping near 0.6 on neaps. Two highs and two lows of unequal size each day, with the asymmetry between the higher high and the lower low varying through the lunar month and shifting toward strongly diurnal at certain phases. The Persian Gulf is shallow — average depth about 50 metres — and the Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran is the only open-ocean connection, so the astronomical forcing propagates as a co-oscillating wave that builds amphidromic patterns across the basin. The defining engineered features are the dredged channels that the modern city is built around. Khor Dubai (the Dubai Creek inlet) was the original natural harbour and remains a working dhow channel for trade with Iran and East Africa. The Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali, and the World Islands archipelagos were constructed from dredged sand from the seabed during the 2000s and the cuts between the palm fronds carry tidal exchange that the artificial-island designers had to engineer around to prevent stagnation. The Burj Al Arab silhouette rises from its own offshore sand pad. Marina ferries, abra crossings of Khor Dubai between Deira and Bur Dubai, the working container terminal at Jebel Ali, and the snorkellers in the Dubai Marine Reserve waters off the south-western coast all read the table for different windows. The UAE National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology and the Dubai Maritime City Authority publish authoritative tide tables.