The ongoing climate change increases vegetation flammability in the boreal forests of eastern North America, leading to more intense and severe wildfires. Using palaeoecological data—including charcoal, pollen, chironomids and testate amoebae—and climate model simulations of vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and available soil water (ASW), we analysed fire dynamics over the past 8000 years in boreal eastern North America. Over the...

Climate change will push the planet worryingly close to its boundaries, across all latitudes and levels of development. One question therefore is the extent to which climate change does (and will) severely affect societies’ livelihoods, health, well-being, and cultures. This paper discusses the “severe climate risks” concept developed under Working Group II’s contribution to the Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports of the Interg...

Northern peatlands act as archives of environmental change through their sensitivity to water balance fluctuations, while being significant contributors to global greenhouse gas dynamics. Subarctic fens in north‐eastern Canada are characterized by a dominance of pools and flarks. We aimed to reconstruct the late Holocene hydrological conditions of these fens to establish the timing of the initiation of pool and flark formation...