Extended Data Fig. 8: Pleistocene hydroclimate of the central Arabian desert and major climate variables.
From: Recurrent humid phases in Arabia over the past 8 million years
a) Benthic LR04 δ18O (‰ VPDB) stack85. The modern values are indicated by the dashed black line. b) Glacial index, where 1 is a full glacial and 0 is a full interglacial, for full details on calculation see Koeler and van de Wal84. The blue dashed line is used as the cutoff (0.5) for significant interglacial phases as indicated by the red panels, where 1 indicates a full glacial endmember and 0 a full interglacial endmember. c) indicates the key for cool, lukewarm and warm interglacial phases. d) Meridional Temperature Gradients calculated from marine sedimentary cores ODP 982 and 72217 where warm (MTG < 11), lukewarm (11 > MTG < 12) and cool interglacials (MTG > 12) are identified by red dashed, pink dashed and purple lines, respectively. d) Negev desert speleothem ages20. e) Central Arabian speleothem ages (this study) where grey circles indicate U-Pb ages, yellow diamonds U-Th ages by solution MC-ICPMS and red squares U-Th ages by LA-MC-ICPMS. f) Southern Arabia speleothem ages from a compilation of cave sites9,52,138,139,140. The horizontal error bars of ages estimates refer to the 95% confidence interval uncertainty. The shaded background panels indicate periods where the glacial index is <0.5.
