Proxies for river discharge into the sea are valuable tools for reconstructing the environmental and climatic conditions of their source drainage areas. Elevated Ba/Ca ratios in calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) skeletons, such as corals, have been shown to reflect flood events. Recently, Ba/Ca ratios in benthic foraminifera have garnered attention as potential proxies for river discharge, owing to their global distribution and high abundance in shallow marine environments. However, studies addressing the registration of individual flood events using coastal benthic foraminifera are lacking; likely due to the lower contrast between high and low flow floods in perennially flowing rivers. In this study, we analyzed Ba/Ca ratios in live benthic foraminifera collected over multiple years from the Gulf of Aqaba-Eilat, a region where floods from ephemeral rivers (wadis) are infrequent and short-lived (typically <1 event per year and <1 day in duration), thereby providing more discreet differences between flood and non-flood time periods. Our results show that Operculina ammonoides’ chambers precipitated up to five months after a flood exhibit elevated Ba/Ca ratios compared to background levels (>5 months post-flood). Temperature changes and pH were ruled out as the cause of these heightened Ba/Ca values based on previous water measurements and the stability of Mg/Ca ratios in the same foraminiferal tests. This further affirms a long period (months) of elevated Ba concentrations in the sediment pore waters following flood events. These findings demonstrate that elevated Ba/Ca ratios in individual shallow-shelf foraminifera can serve as indicators of past desert flood events, offering a valuable proxy for reconstructing climate variability in arid coastal environments.