Oxygen isotope ratios from oak tree rings are used to extend the May–August precipitation totals of the England and Wales precipitation series back to 1201 ce. The agreement between instrumental and reconstructed values is unusually strong, with more than half of the variance explained and standard verification tests passed. The stability of this relationship is confirmed using split‐period calibration and verification. This a...

Ring‐width dendrochronology, based on matching patterns of ring width variability, works best when trees are growing under significant environmental (climatic) stress. In the UK, and elsewhere in the temperate mid‐latitudes, trees generally experience low stress, so dating is more difficult and often fails. Oxygen isotopes in tree rings passively record changes in the isotopic ratios of summer precipitation, so they carry a st...

Research on Quaternary climate change is reviewed from the perspective of the real or potential contribution to improving our ability to predict the climate of the future. For convenience the literature is divided into four timescales: orbital, sub‐Milankovitch, Holocene and the last 2000 years. Four ‘challenges’ provide a framework for discussion: better understanding of the way the climate system works, better forecasting of...

The increasing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration in the atmosphere in combination with climatic changes throughout the last century are likely to have had a profound effect on the physiology of trees: altering the carbon and water fluxes passing through the stomatal pores. However, the magnitude and spatial patterns of such changes in natural forests remain highly uncertain. Here, stable carbon isotope ratios from a network...

Accurate modelling of long‐term changes in plant stomatal functioning is vital to global climate change studies because changes in evapotranspiration influence temperature via physiological forcing of the climate. Various stomatal models are included in land surface schemes, but their robustness over longer timescales is difficult to validate. We compare the performance of three stomatal models, varying in their degree of comp...

We present an 8000‐year history spanning 650 km of ice margin retreat for the largest marine‐terminating ice stream draining the former British–Irish Ice Sheet. Bayesian modelling of the geochronological data shows the ISIS expanded 34.0–25.3 ka, accelerating into the Celtic Sea to reach maximum limits 25.3–24.5 ka before a collapse with rapid marginal retreat to the northern Irish Sea Basin (ISB). This retreat was rapid and d...

A reconstruction of spring (April–May) temperature for northern Fennoscandia developed from the Tornionjoki (Tornio river) long cryophenological record of ice break‐up dates, back to AD 1693, is presented. The record is strongly climatically sensitive and explains 67% of the variance in the instrumental data over the last 150 years. The record exhibits a stepped decrease in the duration of the river's ice cover by 14 days, equ...

Investigating the many internal feedbacks within the climate system is a vital component of the effort to quantify the full effects of future anthropogenic climate change. The stomatal apertures of plants tend to close and decrease in number under elevated CO 2 concentrations, increasing water‐use efficiency (WUE) and reducing canopy evapotranspiration. Experimental and modelling studies reveal huge variations in these changes...

Twentieth‐century summer (July–August) temperatures in northern Finland are reconstructed using ring widths, maximum density and stable carbon isotope ratios (δ 13 C) of Scots pine tree rings, and using combinations of these proxies. Verification is based on the coefficient of determination ( r 2 ), reduction of error (RE) and coefficient of efficiency (CE) statistics. Of the individual proxies, δ 13 C performs best, followed...

Rotherslade on the Gower Peninsula in south Wales has been viewed as a key site for the reconstruction of Quaternary depositional environments in the British Isles. Since the early 20th century, and certainly since the 1980s, the accepted view has been that Rotherslade is the most westerly location on the south Gower coast where there is in situ basal till exposed and that, logically, this location marks the position of the LG...

Geomorphological evidence indicates that Donegal was formerly occupied by an ice dome that extended offshore to the west, northwest and north and was confluent with adjacent ice masses to the east and south. Erosive warm‐based ice over‐rode almost all the highest mountains, implying an ice‐divide altitude greater than 700 m. Only six peripheral summits escaped glacial modification, implying either that they remained above the...

Lithostratigraphical and lithofacies approaches used to interpret glacial sediments often ignore deformation structures that can provide the key to environment of formation. We propose a classification of deformation styles based on the geometry of structures rather than inferred environment of formation. Five styles are recognised: pure shear (P), simple shear (S), compressional (C), vertical (V) and undeformed (U). These dic...

Aminostratigraphy is central to the recently revised correlation of Quaternary deposits in the British Isles, providing a link between terrestrial deposits and marine Oxygen Isotope Stages. The central tenet of British aminostratigraphy, however, that shells from the same interglacial yield very similar ratios, so that the characteristic ratios from different interglacials are distinct, remains uncertain. The data available su...

The glaciomarine model for deglaciation of the Irish Sea basin suggests that the weight of ice at the last glacial maximum was sufficient to raise relative sea‐levels far above their present height, destabilising the ice margin and causing rapid deglaciation. Glacigenic deposits throughout the basin have been interpreted as glaciomarine. The six main lines of evidence on which the hypothesis rests (sedimentology, deformation s...