Atlantic to Urals – the Holocene climatic record of Mid-Latitude Europe

In this chapter we outline the nature and range of the records, and the clarity and timing of the climatic signal. After brief consideration of the background record of change furnished by the ice and ocean-core records we deal with two of the oldest terrestrial sources of proxy climate records from our transect area, peat and pollen data, and then consider annuallyresolved records from lakes, tree rings and speleothems, before summarising changes from the Alps. We highlight evidence from key sites with high quality proxy records, rather than attempting to synthesise a Europe-wide picture, which would be premature, and needs further refinement of site chronologies. Existing compilations of palaeoecological data for Europe, such as Berglund et al. (1996), illustrate the size of such a task.