干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

It is generally recognized that the southern Arabian Peninsula has had two wet periods in the late Quaternary. To quantify ’wet’ a 28 000 year old capillary surface associated with a paleowater-table was mapped and used as a surrogate for the water table in a ground-water model. Analysis of this model suggests 1.4 mm year(-1) of recharge is necessary to support the water table at the mapped elevations during the wet period. Climatic relations between rainfall and recharge in arid areas infer that annual rainfall during this wet period was approximately 200 +/- 50 mm year(-1) or approximately five times the present rate.