Interglacial climates: Advances in our understanding of warm climate episodes

Abstract

The Quaternary is characterized by the alternation of relatively brief periods of temperate climate (interglacials) with episodes of extreme cold, often with the build-up of extensive continental ice sheets. Over the last decade, new research has revealed far greater complexity and diversity in the interglacial record than previously recognized, with temperate-climate episodes of markedly different duration, stability and intensity. These findings not only shed light on the climatic parameters behind changing floras and faunas during the Pleistocene but also aid our understanding of climatic evolution during the Holocene (the current interglacial), in particular the search for the most appropriate past analogues. In this progress report, we review the basis for interglacial complexity, drawing upon the evidence from long continuous terrestrial records in the Mediterranean, Antarctic ice cores and river terrace sequences in western Europe, before using the details of the British Quaternary interglacial record as an example of how marine and terrestrial records can be linked.