Palaeo-proxy reconstructions and present-day observations have demonstrated that the pan-North Atlantic region is a crucial area for modulating the global climate system. Multi-proxy reconstructions (marine and terrestrial) are often focused on single sites or small regional settings and integration of empirical proxies is not necessarily straightforward, often hindered for example by dating uncertainties. However, despite these dating uncertainties, comparison of signals over large geographic areas and a regional scale approach allows for ascertaining a more coherent picture of casual mechanism within the ocean-climate system, for the development of event stratigraphies. Furthermore, enhancement of our understanding of the synchroneity, lags and leads within the climate system provides the opportunity to track key components of the climate system, for example, the polar front.

An alternative approach is through complex numerical modelling which can provide climate information independent from empirical data. It may provide physical explanations for the evolution of the climate system and aid our understanding of the timing, magnitudes and rates of past climate change, but background parameters, forcing scenarios and outputs must be representative, and reconciled with, the available empirical data.

The aim of this session is to bring together the field-based empiricist and climate modelling communities in order foster collaboration. To this end contributions are invited which provide marine, cryosphere and terrestrial empirical data, output from numerical climate models and ideally studies which integrate both.