Pacing and synchronisation of palaeoclimate variability, June2017

This joint meeting between ReCoVER and Past Earth Network took place at Dartington Hall, Devon, UK on 29th and 30th June 2017. The meeting looked at a hierarchy of nonlinear models of past climate and will consider how global oscillations of climate variables are created (forced or internal) and may be "paced" by astronomical or other forcing. This adds to our understanding of how the climate system in general responds to forcing, which is relevant for projected future climate change.

Questions included:

• How is information moved up and down the hierarchy of models, and how can simple conceptual models be evaluated against more complex models and palaeoclimate data?
• Which behaviours found in low-order models can be expected to remain in the more complex models, and which will disappear/change?
• What are the differences between models for cold vs warm climates, e.g. how is variability in warm climates affected by lack of ice sheets?
• How can classes/types of conceptual models be usefully grouped, eg stochastic vs deterministic, average vs phenomenological?
• How can one best validate models against data and each other?
• How can we use knowledge of past climate to improve climate forecasts?