Speleothems are key terrestrial archives of regional to global palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental changes on sub-seasonal to orbital timescales. They provide high temporally resolved records which can be accurately and precisely dated using U–Th or U–Pb techniques in combination with a variety of proxies such as stable O and C isotopes and trace element ratios. Recent efforts have seen the rise in more non-traditional proxies, such as fluid inclusion water isotopes, organic biomarkers, pollen, dead carbon fraction etc. This advancement towards quantitative reconstructions of past precipitation, temperature, or other environmental variables and climate patterns are key for data-model comparisons and further evaluations. Beyond this, caves and karst areas additionally host an enormous suite of valuable proxy archives such as cave ice, cryogenic carbonates, clastic sediments, tufa, or travertine sequences, which complement the terrestrial palaeorecord, and are often associated with important fossils, historical or archaeological findings.

This session aims to integrate recent developments in the field and invites abstract submissions from a broad range of cave- and karst-related studies from orbital to sub-seasonal timescales.
In particular, we welcome contributions from:
(1) (quantitative) reconstructions of past climatic and environmental variables to explore precipitation, vegetation, fire frequency, and temperature changes across different climate zones;
(2) field- and lab-based developments of process-based methods to improve the application of cave and karst-related proxy variables;
(3) developments in chronological methods and their applications;
(4) process and proxy-system model studies as well as integrated research on developing and using databases such as SISAL (Speleothem Isotope Synthesis and AnaLysis).

We further welcome advancements in related and/or interdisciplinary areas, which pave the way towards robust (quantitative) interpretations of proxy time series, improve the understanding of proxy-relevant processes, or enable regional-to-global and seasonal-to-orbital scale analyses of the relationships between proxies and environmental parameters. In addition, research contributing to current international co-ordinated activities, such as the PAGES working group on Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis (SISAL) and others are welcome.