- 1Quaternary Geology, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland (ismini.lypiridou@unibas.ch, dominik.fleitmann@unibas.ch)
- 2Department of Humanities, Ca'Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
- 3Earth Sciences Consultancy Centre, PO Box 979, PC. 611, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman
- 4Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
Understanding human-climate interactions over the past two millennia is critical for areas like Oman, where water has been a valuable resource and has shaped societal resilience and adaptation strategies. Oman’s unique geographical location, at the pathway of monsoonal activity and tropical cyclones, makes it an ideal area to investigate the links between climatic variability and extreme rainfall events. During the last few decades, Oman was affected by several tropical cyclones, such as cyclone Mekunu in May 2018. Furthermore, Oman is also frequently affected by flash floods, which cause severe damages to people and property. Detailed information about tropical cyclone and flash flood activity in the recent and more distant past is urgently needed to place present-day cyclone activity and flash flood frequencies into a meaningful historical context, and to detect any significant changes in their occurrence rates. Because of the brevity of historical and instrumental records in Oman, such information must be obtained from natural archives such as stalagmites, which can be used as a paleoflood archive (e.g., Denniston and Lütscher, 2017). During flooding of caves, stalagmites can be coated with sediment and biogenic particles which are then preserved as distinct detrital layers when the stalagmite growth continues.
Here we present first results of two Uranium-series dated actively-growing stalagmites from northern and southern Oman, one from Qunf Cave and Hoti Cave (Fleitmann et al., 2022) to explore the frequency of extreme rainfall events and their climatic drivers. Both cave systems are frequently affected by flooding (Al Kindi et al., 2023) and the two stalagmites show frequent detrital layers along their growth axis. Using digital image analysis of thin sections and high-resolution trace element profiles, we are able to develop a precisely dated record of cave flooding related to tropical cyclones and regional heavy rainfall events over the last two millennia.
References
Al Kindi et al., 2023. A guide to the caves of Oman – The remarkable subterranean world of the Sultanate of Oman. Nomad Publishing, 274 pages.
Denniston, R.F., Luetscher, M., 2017. Speleothems as high-resolution paleoflood archives. Quaternary Science Reviews 170, 1-13.
Fleitmann et al., 2022. Droughts and societal change: The environmental context for the emergence of Islam in late Antique Arabia. Science 376, 1317-+.
How to cite: Lypiridou, I., Plattner, S., Foxhall Forbes, H., Al Kindi, M., Cheng, H., and Fleitmann, D.: Extreme rainfall events recorded in stalagmites from Oman during the last two millennia, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-18184, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18184, 2025.
