The Arctic and Pacific oceans are connected by the presently ~53 m deep Bering Strait. During the last glacial period when the sea level was lower than today, the Bering Strait was exposed. Humans and animals could then migrate between Asia and North America across the formed land bridge. From analyses of sediment cores and geophysical mapping data from Herald Canyon north of the Bering Strait, we show that the land bridge was flooded about 11 000 years ago.

Blue intensity shows great potential for reconstructing past summer temperatures from conifer trees growing at high latitude or the treeline. However, conifer species that express a strong colour difference between the heartwood and sapwood can impart a long-term trend bias in the resultant reconstructions. Herein, we highlight this issue using eight mountain hemlock sites across the Gulf of Alaska and explore how a non-biased reconstruction of past temperature could be derived using such data.

This study is devoted to reconstructing Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW) variability and the interplay between the Mediterranean and North Atlantic climate systems during the Early Pleistocene. We find indication that the increasing production of MOW aligns with the intensification of the North Atlantic overturning circulation, highlighting the potential of MOW to modulate the North Atlantic salt budget. Our results are based on new stable isotope and grain-size data from IODP 339 Site U1389.

Climate models are able to simulate the surface temperature of the early Eocene as reconstructed from paleoclimatology data, but only by using extremely high CO₂ concentrations or clouds that are more transparent to solar radiation. We explore the potential for distinguishing among these two forcing agents via their impact on regional climate. Better constraining the radiative forcing that led to Eocene warmth has important implications for understanding Earth's climate sensitivity.

The study of past sedimentary records from coastal margins allows us to reconstruct variations in terrestrial input into the marine realm and to gain insight into continental climatic variability. The study of two sediment cores close to river mouths allowed us to show the potential of long-chain diols as riverine input proxy.