We study the climatic signal, with a focus on volcanic-induced shocks, in two long annual records of wine production quantity (spanning 1444–1786) from present-day Luxembourg, close to the northern limit of viticulture in Europe. Highly significant wine production declines are found during years following major volcanic events. Furthermore, warmer and drier climate conditions favoured wine production, with spring and summer conditions being the most important ones.

In this study, we use the distribution of soil bacterial membrane lipids stored on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) to quantitatively reconstruct variations in precipitation amount over the past 130 kyr. The precipitation record shows orbital- and millennial-scale variations and varies at precession and obliquity scale. The application of this precipitation proxy across the CLP indicates a more pronounced spatial gradient during glacials, when the western CLP experiences more arid conditions.

New probabilistic methods for local quantitative paleoclimate reconstructions are introduced within a Bayesian framework and applied to plant proxy data from Lake Kinneret (Israel). Recent climate data and arboreal pollen from the lake's sediment are added as predefined boundary conditions. The results provide a reconstruction of the mean December–February temperature and annual precipitation, along with their associated uncertainty ranges, in this region during the Holocene.

Earth's past temperature reconstructions are critical for understanding climate change. We test the ability of these reconstructions using climate simulations. Uncertainties, mainly from past temperature measurement methods and age determination, impact reconstructions over time. While more data enhance accuracy for long-term trends, high-quality data are more important for short-term precision. Our study lays the groundwork for better reconstructions and suggests avenues for improvement.

It is known that coral reefs were absent in the central Indo-Pacific during the Early Pliocene. This study uses a new temperature record based on TEX₈₆^H biomarkers from the Coral Sea between 11–2 Ma to show a 2 °C cooling in the central Indo-Pacific during the Late Miocene Cooling (7–5.4 Ma). This cooling triggered changes in terrestrial input, ocean circulation, and temperature. These multiple stressors could have caused reef collapses across the central Indo-Pacific.

Marine sediment and ice core records suggest a warmer Southern Ocean and Antarctica at the early last interglacial, ~127 000 years ago. However, when only forced by orbital parameters and greenhouse gas concentrations during that period, state-of-the-art climate models do not reproduce the magnitude of warming. Here we show that much of the warming at southern middle to high latitudes can be reproduced by a UK climate model, HadCM3, with a 3000-year freshwater forcing over the North Atlantic.

This work verifies the remarkable finds of late Eocene Antarctic-sourced iceberg-rafted debris on the South Orkney Microcontinent. We find that these icebergs must have been on the larger end of the size scale compared to today’s icebergs due to faster melting in the warmer Eocene climate. The study was performed using a high-resolution model in which individual icebergs were followed through time.

We offer a clearer view of the timing of three relevant past glacial terminations. By analyzing the climatic signal recorded in stalagmite and linking it with marine records, we revealed differences in the intensity and duration of the ice melting associated with these three key deglaciations. This study shows that some deglaciations began earlier than previously thought; this improves our understanding of natural climate processes, helping us to contextualize current climate change.

Climatic reconstructions of Marine Isotope Stages (MISs) 19, 11, and 5 and the current interglacial (MIS 1) based on pollen data from a marine core (Alboran Sea) show that, compared with MIS 1, MIS 19 was colder and highly variable, MIS 11 was longer and more stable, and MIS 5 was warmer. There is no real equivalent to the current interglacial, but past interglacials give insights into the sensitivity of the southwestern Mediterranean to global climatic changes in conditions similar to MIS 1.

Air trapped in polar ice during snowfall reflects atmospheric pressure at the time of occlusion, serving as a proxy for elevation. However, melting, firn structure changes, and air pressure variability complicate this relationship. We measured total air content (TAC) in the RECAP ice core from Renland ice cap, eastern Greenland, spanning 121 000 years. Melt layers and short-term TAC variations, whose origins remain unclear, present challenges in interpreting elevation changes.

We use a series of spectral techniques to quantify the strength of high-frequency climate variability in northeastern Greenland to 50 000 ka before present. Importantly, we find that variability consistently decreases hundreds of years prior to Dansgaard–Oeschger warming events. Model simulations suggest a change in North Atlantic sea ice behavior contributed to this pattern, thus providing new information on the conditions which preceded abrupt climate change during the Last Glacial Period.

Public granaries served as key infrastructure to improve food security in agrarian societies. Granary data from 15 domains at the Sušice region (southwestern Bohemia) in the period 1789–1849 CE are used here to identify years with bad and good grain harvests, which have been further analysed using documentary data and climatic reconstructions. The data used represent a new source of proxy data for historical–climatological research.

We simulated how different processes affected the carbon cycle over the last eight glacial cycles. We found that the effects of interactive marine sediments enlarge the carbon fluxes that result from these processes, especially in the ocean, and alter various proxy signals. We provide an assessment of the directions of regional and global proxy changes that might be expected in response to different glacial–interglacial Earth system changes in the presence of interactive marine sediments.

Persistent rains in the eastern Atlantic during 1768–1769 caused the worst agricultural crisis in Galicia and northern Portugal. Using the EKF400v2 paleo-reanalysis dataset, it was found that the rainfall anomaly was positive in 11 out of 12 months. June 1768 saw the highest positive rain anomaly of the century; September 1768 saw the second-highest. The atmospheric synoptic patterns show negative anomalies in sea level pressure and 500 hPa. These patterns induce surface low-pressure systems.