We show that plant functional diversity significantly affects climate–vegetation interaction and the climate–vegetation system stability in response to external forcing using a series of coupled land–atmosphere simulation. Our findings raise the question of how realistically Earth system models can actually represent climate–vegetation interaction, considering the incomplete representation of plant functional diversity in the current generation of land surface models.

A high-resolution dynamical model was used to give the first simulation of the distribution of natural and anthropogenic radiocarbon (¹⁴C) across the whole Mediterranean Sea. The model correctly simulates the main features of ¹⁴C distribution during and after the bomb perturbation. The results demonstrate the major influence of the flux of Atlantic water through the Strait of Gibraltar, and a significant increase in ¹⁴C in the Aegean deep water during the Eastern Mediterranean Transient event.

We have analysed the rate of calcification of fossil reef corals. These measurements are important, because the rate of formation of the skeleton depends on the physical environment in which the corals lived. The rates of skeletal calcification of the fossils were approximately 50 % lower than they are in extant reef corals. This is a likely effect of high water temperatures and/or low carbonate saturation of the water – factors that will also affect coral growth by future global warming.

We reconstruct spatiotemporal variations in biomass burning since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) using the Global Charcoal Database version 3 (including 736 records) and a method to grid the data. LGM to late Holocene burning broadly tracks global and regional climate changes over that interval. Human activities increase fire in the 1800s and then reduce it for most of the 20th century. Burning is now rapidly increasing, particularly in western North America and southeastern Australia.

Chronology is fundamental in paleoclimatology for understanding timing of events and their origin. In this paper we try to obtain a more detailed chronology for the interval comprised between ca. 140 and 70 ka for the DEEP core in Lake Ohrid using regional independently-dated archives (i.e. speleothems and/or lacustrine succession with well-dated volcanic layers). This allows to insert the DEEP chronology within a common chronological frame between different continental and marine proxy records.

The magnetic record from Lake Ohrid reflects a strong change in geochemical conditions in the lake. Before 320 ka glacial sediments contain iron sulfides, while later glacials are dominated by siderite. Superimposed on this large-scale pattern are climatic induced changes in the magnetic mineralogy. Glacial and stadial sediments are characterized by relative increases of high- vs. low-coercivity minerals which relate to enhanced erosion in the catchment, possibly due to a sparse vegetation.