A 601-year lake area reconstruction in NW Argentina and SW Bolivia, characterized the occurrence of annual to multi-decadal lake area fluctuations and its main oscillation modes of variability. Our reconstruction points out that the late 20th century decrease in lake area was exceptional over the period 1407–2007. A persistent negative trend in lake area is clear in the reconstruction and consistent with glacier retreat and other climate proxies from the Altiplano and the tropical Andes.

This paper presents a millennial δ18O series and the reconstruction of the maximal temperature. The maximal replication and annual resolution have been obtained by using cohort sampling method. Three contrasted climatic periods have been identified: the medieval warm period (~997-1250; the warmest), the little ice age (~1450-1880) and the modern period (1970-2000) that is one of the fastest warming over the last millennium.

In this paper we explore the permafrost–ice-sheet interaction using the fully coupled climate–ice-sheet model CLIMBER-2 with the addition of a newly developed permafrost module. We find that permafrost has a moderate but significant effect on ice sheet dynamics during the last glacial cycle. In particular at the Last Glacial Maximum the inclusion of permafrost leads to a 15m sea level equivalent increase in Northern Hemisphere ice volume when permafrost is included.

Testing hypotheses for mechanisms and dynamics of past climate change relies on the accuracy of geological dating. Development of a highly accurate geological timescale for the Cenozoic Era has previously been hampered by discrepancies between radioisotopic and astronomical dating methods, as well as a stratigraphic gap in the middle Eocene. We close this gap and provide a fundamental advance in establishing a reliable and highly accurate geological timescale for the last 66 million years.

The ongoing warming of the Arctic is producing changes in vegetation and hydrology that, coupled with rising sea level, could mediate global changes. We explored this possibility using regional climate model simulations of a past interval of warming in Beringia and found that the regional-scale changes do strongly mediate the responses to global changes, amplifying them in some cases, damping them in others, and, overall, generating considerable spatial heterogeneity in climate change.

This project describes mammal faunal response in the zone of the ETM2 and H2 hyperthermals (rapid global warming events) of the early Paleogene in the south-central Bighorn Basin, WY. The response includes changes in faunal structure and species relative body size. Comparative analysis suggests that environmental moisture and rate of change are important moderators of response.

We present results from western Mexico, where very few palaeoclimatic research sites exist. The record has good chronological resolution (ca. 20 years) and clear climatic trends during the last 2ka. The most important signals are: dry conditions during the late Classic (AD 500 to 1000), especially from AD 600 to 800, and low lake levels during the LIA, in two phases that follow Spörer and Maunder solar minima. Drier conditions are related with a lower intensity of the North American monsoon.

Deep-sea sediments at ODP Site 1263 (Walvis Ridge, South Atlantic) show that marine calcifying algae decreased in abundance and size at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, when the Earth transitioned from a greenhouse to a more glaciated and cooler climate. This decreased the food supply for benthic foraminifer communities. The plankton rapidly responded to fast-changing conditions, such as seasonal nutrient availability, or to threshold-levels in pCO2, cooling and ocean circulation.