This paper reports the first development of sub-fossil chironomid-based mean July temperature transfer functions from China. The transfer functions yield reliable reconstructions that are comparable to the instrumental record. The application of this new tool will provide long-term quantitative palaeoclimate estimates from south-western China which is a critical region for understanding the dynamic and evolution of the Indian Ocean south-west Monsoon system.

In the boreal Atlantic, the subpolar and subtropical gyres (SPG and STG respectively) are key elements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) cell and contribute to climate modulations over Europe. Here we document the last 10 kyr evolution of sea-surface temperatures over the North Atlantic with a focus on new data obtained from an exceptional sedimentary archive retrieved the southern Bay of Biscay, enabling the study of Holocene archives at (infra)centennial scales.

Using records of a long-lived radioactive nuclide (¹⁰Be) that is formed globally in the atmosphere and deposited within a few years to the earth’s surface, we have synchronized three Antarctic ice cores to one from Greenland. This permits the climate and other environmental parameters registered in these ice cores to be put on a common timescale with a precision of a few decades, thus allowing different models and mechanisms associated with these parameters to be tested with the same precision.

The Southern Ocean plays a fundamental role in global climate but suffers from a dearth of observational data. As the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013–2014 we have developed the first annually resolved temperature record using trees from subantarctic southwest Pacific (52–54˚S) to extend the climate record back to 1870. With modelling we show today's high climate variability became established in the ~1940s and likely driven by a Rossby wave response originating from the tropical Pacific.

This study aims to reconstruct the climate evolution of the Mediterranean region during the Holocene from pollen data and model outputs. The model- and pollen-inferred precipitation estimates show overall agreement: the eastern Medit. experienced wetter-than-present summer conditions during the early–late Holocene. This regional climate model highlights how the patchy nature of climate signals and data in the Medit. may lead to stronger local signals than the large-scale pattern suggests.

To understand future ENSO behaviour we must look at the past, but temperature and rainfall proxies (e.g. tree rings, sediment cores) appear to show different responses. We tested this by making separate multi-proxy ENSO reconstructions for precipitation and temperature and found no evidence of a disagreement between ENSO-driven changes in precipitation and temperature. While this supports our physical understanding of ENSO, the lack of good proxy data must be addressed to further explore this.