The International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) identified a number of challenges to improve understanding of the past climate on differing timescales. One of its foci concerns the last 40,000 years. They include the transition from the last glacial maximum into the present warm interglacial and a sequence of abrupt swings in climate, as recorded in Greenland ice cores and other climate archives. A network of temporally synchronized, high-resolution archives is needed to further document the spatial and temporal progression of these climate events, while models, ranging in complexity, are a key to diagnosing processes and mechanisms responsible. The session will allow scientists to present new high-resolution and well-dated climate records from different archives (such as the new ice cores of Berkner Island, Talos Dome, WAIS, NEEM,...) as well as modellers to present their views on the regional patterns of climate change and their teleconnections in this time frame.