The characterisation of abrupt transitions in palaeoclimate records allows understanding of millennial climate variability and potential tipping points in the context of current climate change. In our study an algorithmic method, the matrix profile, is employed to characterise abrupt warmings designated as Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) events and to identify the most similar transitions in the palaeoclimate time series.

The study of abrupt climate changes is a relatively new field of research that addresses paleoclimate variations that occur in intervals of tens to hundreds of years. Such timescales are much shorter than the tens to hundreds of thousands of years that the astronomical theory of climate addresses. We revisit several high-resolution proxy records of the past 3.2 Myr and show that the abrupt climate changes are nevertheless affected by the orbitally induced insolation changes.

New investigations of European loess records from MIS 6 reveal the occurrence of paleosols and horizon showing slight pedogenesis similar to those from the last climatic cycle. These units are correlated with interstadials described in various marine, continental, and ice Northern Hemisphere records. Therefore, these MIS 6 interstadials can confidently be interpreted as DO-like events of the penultimate climate cycle.

Whether an ice sheet once grew over Northeast Siberia-Beringia has been debated for decades. By comparing climate modelling with paleoclimate and glacial records from around the North Pacific, this study shows that the Laurentide-Eurasia-only ice sheet configuration fails in explaining these records, while a scenario involving the ice sheet over Northeast Siberia-Beringia succeeds. It highlights the complexity in glacial climates and urges new investigations across Northeast Siberia-Beringia.

We use a Bayesian approach for inferring inverse, stochastic–dynamic models from northern Greenland (NGRIP) oxygen and dust records of subdecadal resolution for the interval 59 to 22 ka b2k. Our model reproduces the statistical and dynamical characteristics of the records, including the Dansgaard–Oeschger variability, with no need for external forcing. The crucial ingredients are cubic drift terms, nonlinear coupling terms between the oxygen and dust time series, and non-Markovian contributions.