The fate of carbon stored in Arctic peatlands remains uncertain because of the complex nature of the effects of climate change on permafrost and peatland carbon cycling. Expansion and/or shrinkage of Arctic peatlands under climate change also remain unknown due to lack of ground data and difficulties detecting changes in the extent of these ecosystems, meaning that land surface model predictions currently inadequately quantify...

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 warming is leading to permafrost thaw in northern peatlands, and current predictions suggest that thawing will drive greater surface wetness and an increase in methane emissions. Hydrology largely drives peatland vegetation composition, which is a key element in peatland functioning and thus in carbon dynamics. These processes are expected to change. Peatland carbon accumulation is determined by the balance between pla...

Proxy reconstructions of climatic parameters developed using transfer functions are central to the testing of many palaeoclimatic hypotheses on Holocene timescales. However, recent work shows that the mathematical models underpinning many existing transfer functions are susceptible to spatial autocorrelation, clustered training set design and the uneven sampling of environmental gradients. This may result in over‐optimistic pe...