Global ocean circulation plays a key role in redistributing heat and in setting the oceanic carbon gradients, and thus modulates global climate on centennial to millennial time scales. With the emergence of new methods, greater spatial and temporal paleo-record coverage, and model simulations with numerous tracers, significant improvement has been made in the understanding of past oceanic changes and their impacts on global climate and the carbon cycle. New proxy approaches and increasing geographical coverage fill important gaps in the reconstruction of different ocean states and decrease uncertainty that arises from interpretations based on individual parameters and sites. Similarly, refined model approaches and increased computing capacity allow for the integration of important small- and intermediate scale processes as well as the direct inclusion of proxies in numerical models.

This session welcomes contributions on the role of the ocean circulation in Pleistocene climate and glacial-interglacial climate transitions. This comprises proxy and model assessments of ocean heat and carbon content, circulation strength and other climatic and biogeochemical parameters, including details on their regional variation, given they are relevant for understanding global processes. Furthermore, we encourage contributions of reconstructions that seem contradictory to the prevailing view insofar as their discussion may hint towards processes or pitfalls that are under appreciated and thus potentially important for future research.