Editorial Introduction to the special issue “Glacial–interglacial climate of the past 160,000 years: New insights from data and models” This special issue grew out of three sessions at the 2003 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting: “The Last Interglacial I”, chaired by Bette L. Otto-Bliesner and Gifford H. Miller; “The Last Interglacial II”, chaired by Meixun Zhao; and “Climate of the Last Glacial– Interglacial Cycle: New Insights From Models and Data”, chaired by Noah S. Diffenbaugh and C. Mark Eakin. These sessions were comprised of oral and poster presentations reporting on recent study of the dynamics shaping glacial and interglacial climates of the past 160,000 years. Specifically, as the titles suggest, the first two sessions focused on the climate of the last inter- glacial, while the last focused on the climate of the last glacial and the current interglacial. This special issue is inherently eclectic, assembling a cross-section of current insights into the patterns and causes of late-Quaternary climate change. Not only does the issue include both proxy and numerical data, but it also includes studies employing a range of proxy and mode- ling techniques and focuses on a range of temporal and spatial scales. Our intention is that the diversity of papers creates a cross-disciplinary sample of the latest develop- ments in our understanding of climate variation over the past two glacial–interglacial cycles, with emphasis both on characterizing climate evolution during that period and on understanding the mechanisms shaping that evolution. The results presented here span a large range of proxy and numerical data. Five of the papers present new ter- restrial proxy data from speleothems (Kelly et al. and Johnson et al.), fossil pollen (Frechette et al.), midge remains (Francis et al.), and icecore borehole tempera- tures (Nagornov et al.). Three present new marine proxy data from oxygen isotopes (Lin et al.), alkenones (Zhao et al.), bulk sediments (Lin et al.) and foraminiferal assemblages (Lin et al. and Yu et al.). Finally, three of the papers employ unique or rarely applied modeling techniques to gain insight into glacial–interglacial climate, including iceberg trajectory modeling (Death et al.), regional climate modeling (Diffenbaugh et al.), and a novel twist on traditional forward and inverse modeling methods (Nagornov et al.). In addition to bringing together papers from a variety of disciplines on the broad topic of glacial–interglacial climate of the past 160,000 years, the issue also brings together smaller groups of papers on more specific sub- themes. For instance, five of the papers (Lin et al., Yu et al., Zhao et al., Kelly et al. and Johnson et al.) provide insight into the late-Quaternary evolution of climate in east Asia and the western Pacific. The sensitivity of monsoon systems to changes in external climate forcing remains a dominant theme of late-Quaternary paleocli- matology, both because of the prominence of these systems in the global climate system and because of the large populations that are impacted by monsoon varia- bility. These papers help to elucidate the sensitivity of the East Asian Monsoon to changes in external forcing of climate and to internal climate system feedbacks. In particular, they suggest that East Asian Monsoon activity was enhanced during warm periods and muted during cool periods, with changes in insolation, sea level and the carbon cycle contributing to monsoon variability. A second sub-theme is the climate of the Arctic. Four of the papers (Death et al., Nagornov et al., Fréchette et al. and Francis et al.) provide insight into glacial–interglacial processes operating in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes. This sub-theme is particularly relevant as the climate science community attempts to understand an- thropogenic and non-anthropogenic variability of high latitude-systems, with concerns that the high latitudes will be particularly sensitive to anthropogenic greenhouse warming. These papers help to shed light on the past dynamics of these systems, both quantifying their past Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 236 (2006) 1 – 4 www.elsevier.com/locate/palaeo 0031-0182/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2005.03.057