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JOURNAL OF QUATERNARY SCIENCE, vol.37, no.3, pp.503-515, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
High-resolution Th-230 ages and stable isotope (delta O-18 and delta C-13) records from a stalagmite that grew between 39 and 2 ka in Incesu Cave located in south-central Anatolia allow us to evaluate paleoclimate conditions for growth periods during Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3) and the Holocene. High delta O-18 values and Heinrich events H3 and H4 are observed during the MIS3 interval. After a dry period in the Younger Dryas, low values between ca. 10 and 5.3 ka suggest a transition to wet mid- to early Holocene conditions. In the early Holocene, there are drier periods at 9.4 and 10.3 ka, coincident with cooling events recorded in the North Atlantic sediments and, after 5.3 ka a relatively dry late Holocene is seen. The IN-01 isotope record is in phase with general trends of speleothem records in Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean but differs in detail at the millennial scale. The more depleted delta O-18 values of IN-01 compared to those of Eastern Mediterranean speleothems during the Holocene indicate that central Anatolian winter rainfall was isotopically influenced by the same air mass trajectories derived from the North Atlantic and Mediterranean with an isotopic rain shadow effect.