We present projections of long-term changes in climate, produced using a statistical emulator based on climate data from a state-of-the-art climate model. We use the emulator to model changes in temperature and precipitation over the late Pliocene (3.3–2.8 million years before present) and the next 200 thousand years. The impact of the Earth's orbit and the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration on climate is assessed, and the data for the late Pliocene are compared to proxy temperature data.