Our understanding of palaeoclimatic variability has been increased considerably by research into global climate change conducted during the last three decades. We have begun to appreciate the inconceivable complexity of this system with its forcing factors and feedbacks related to circumpolar ice bodies, oceans and atmospheric circulation. Moreover, the situation on the continents is complicated further by regional feedbacks that modify the impact of changing global climatic factors.
Palaeoclimatic reconstructions based on a variety of related environmental proxy data are important.
Continental palaeoclimatic records are critical because they provide evidence of the impacts of past climatic changes that were relevant to human societies and their activities. The stratigraphy of European peat bogs was one of the earliest forms of proxy-climate record with pioneer research by Blytt, Sernander, Weber and Lewis in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the recognition of features such as Recurrence Surfaces. Also, unlike the oceanic or ice core records, peatlands are easily sampled using hand-driven corers, and they are abundant and distributed in all temperate zones. However, many European peatlands have been damaged by human activities and the link between the documented climate of the last few centuries and the proxy-record may therefore not exist in some areas, and in others it may be overlain by an anthropogenic signal. This page last updated Friday, February 16 2001.