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Two main drivers shaped European summer drought over the past millennium: atmospheric circulation created contrasts between Scandinavia and Southern Europe, while temperature changes drove homogenous drying and wetting at European scale.

A probabilistic analysis of climate variation during the period AD 1050–1800 refines available estimates of the influence of temperature change on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Annually resolved Fennoscandian tree-ring anatomy records show that the climate of the current industrial era is substantially warmer than that of the medieval period.

The last deglaciation was interrupted by a cool period known as the Younger Dryas. Numerical simulations suggest that the cold interval was the result of a combination of changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation and reduced radiative forcing.

Estimating the magnitude of radiative and non-radiative feedbacks is key for understanding the climate dynamics of polar regions. Here the authors propose an inclusive methodology to quantify the influence of all those feedbacks, stimulating more systematic analyses in observational and model ensembles.

Common Era sea-ice variability in the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean was strongly influenced by interacting climate modes, according to climate modelling and an analysis of sea-ice and temperature proxies.

Ocean warming contributes to the thinning of the Antarctic ice shelves, however, lack of observations has prevented a quantification of this contribution. Here the authors use geological records to show that 0.3–1.5 °C ocean warming has played a central role on regional ice shelf instability over the last 9000 years.

Reconstructions of ocean and land temperatures since ad 1500 indicate that sustained, industrial-era warming of land areas in the Northern Hemisphere and tropical oceans began earlier than previously thought, around the mid-nineteenth century.

The mechanisms responsible for the overall expansion of Antarctic sea-ice in recent decades remain unclear. Here, using observations and model results, the authors show that ice-ocean feedbacks, triggered by an external perturbation, could be responsible for changes in sea-ice extent observed in the Ross Sea.

Antarctic sea ice extent decreased abruptly in 2016 and has remained low since then, with similar drops in the 1970s but smaller magnitude, in which the higher sea ice loss occurred in the East Antarctic sector due to ocean atmospheric forcing, according to results from a multi-variate spatial reconstruction from 1958 to 2023.

The record low summer Antarctic sea-ice extent of February 2023 can be linked to preconditioning, wind-induced transport, and ice albedo feedback, according to an analysis which combines reanalyses, observations and regional ocean-sea-ice coupled modelling.

A reduced gradient in temperatures between low and high latitudes during the Holocene led to drier mid-latitudes.

Projections of Arctic sea-ice loss vary significantly between global circulation models. Analysis of the CMIP5 ensemble reveals that these differences can be related to background ice thickness and corresponding growth/melt processes, and not variations in the sea-ice model used.

Tropical teleconnections can influence polar climates through the generation of stationary Rossby waves. This Review outlines the dynamics and impacts of long-term tropical–polar connections on the Antarctic climate, which include warming trends and ice mass loss in West Antarctica.

Antarctic climate trends observed in the satellite record are compared with a two hundred year paleoclimate record. The satellite record is found to be too short to attribute changes to anthropogenic forcing, with natural variability overwhelming the forced signal.

Sea surface temperatures have varied over the past 2,000 years. A synthesis of surface-temperature reconstructions shows ocean surface cooling from ad 1 to 1800, with much of the trend from 800 to 1800 driven by volcanic eruptions.

Positive phases of the Southern Annular Mode lead to enhanced basal melt overall in the Antarctic ice shelves, with strong losses in the Bellingshausen and Western Pacific sectors and gains in the Amundsen Sea, according to ice-ocean model experiments.

Long-term changes in future snow accumulation in Antarctica are influenced more strongly by changes in storm systems than the large-scale circulation, according to an analysis of the Antarctic moisture budget from climate simulations and reanalysis data.

Temperature change over the past 2,000 years has shown pronounced regional variability. An assessment of all available continental temperature reconstructions shows a clear twentieth century warming trend, but no evidence of a coherent Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period.