This paper investigates the climatic response to orbital forcing through the analysis of an ensemble of simulations covering a late Miocene precession cycle. Including orbital variability in our model–data comparison reduces the mismatch between the proxy record and model output. Our results indicate that ignoring orbital variability could lead to miscorrelations in proxy reconstructions. The North African summer monsoon's sensitivity is high to orbits, moderate to paleogeography and low to CO2.

The alkenone sea surface temperatures in the Guiana Basin show a rapid transmission of the climate variability from arctic to tropical latitudes during the last two interglacials (MIS1 and MIS5e) and warm long interstadials (MIS5d-a). In contrast, the abrupt variability of the glacial interval does follow the North Atlantic climate but is also shaped by precessional changes. This arctic to tropical decoupling occurs when the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is substantially reduced.

Several episodes of global warming took place during greenhouse conditions in the early Eocene and are recorded in deep-sea sediments. The stable carbon and oxygen isotope records are used to investigate the magnitude of six of these events describing their effects on the global carbon cycle and the associated temperature response. Findings indicate that these events share a common nature and hint to the presence of multiple sources of carbon release.

Indonesia’s climate has been linked to El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events that often result in extensive droughts and floods over Indonesia. In this study we investigate ENSO-related signals in a tree-ring δ18O record of Javanese teak. Our results reveal a clear influence of Warm Pool El Niño events on Javanese tree-ring δ18O. These results illustrate the importance of considering ENSO flavors when interpreting palaeoclimate proxy records in the tropics.

Our study shows that the influence of obliquity (the tilt of Earth's rotational axis) can be explained through changes in the insolation gradient across the tropics. This explanation is fundamentally different from high-latitude mechanisms that were previously often inferred to explain obliquity signals in low-latitude paleoclimate records, for instance glacial fluctuations. Our study is based on state-of-the-art climate model experiments.

In this study we compile global isotope proxy records of climate changes from the last ice age to the late-Holocene preserved in cave calcite, glacial ice and groundwater aquifers. We show that global patterns of late-Pleistocene to late-Holocene precipitation isotope shifts are consistent with stronger-than-modern isotopic distillation of air masses during the last ice age, likely impacted by larger global temperature differences between the tropics and the poles.

We present a new pollen-based palaeoclimatic reconstruction covering the period between 190,000 and 24,000 years ago from a marine sediment core located off the Namibian coast. Our work identifies increased dryness during the three warmest periods of the last interglacial involving atmospheric and oceanic reorganisations in southern Africa that are linked to precession minima.

Here we diagnose simulated changes in large-scale climate variables associated with the formation of tropical cyclones (i.e. hurricanes and typhoons). The cumulative potential for storm formation is pretty constant, despite the climate changes between the Last Glacial Maximum and the warm Pliocene. There are, however, coherent shifts in the relative strength of the storm regions. Little connection appears between the past behaviour in the five models studied and their future projections.

A new data set of 3194 oak (Quercus spp.) ring width samples collected across the Czech Republic and covering the past 1250 years was analysed. The temporal distribution of negative and positive TRW extremes occurring is regular with no indication of clustering. Negative TRW extremes coincided with above-average March-May and June-August temperature means and below-average precipitation totals. Positive extremes coincided with higher summer precipitation, while temperatures were mostly normal.

The present study investigates the potential impact of the North American ice sheet on the surface mass balance of the Eurasian ice sheet through changes in the past glacial atmospheric circulation. Using an atmospheric circulation model and an ice-sheet model, we show that the albedo of the American ice sheet favors the growth of the Eurasian ice sheet, whereas the topography of the American ice sheet leads to more ablation over North Eurasia, and therefore to a smaller Eurasian ice sheet.