Climatic and environmental variability in the Mid-Latitude Europe sector during the last interglacial-glacial cycle

Key criteria when constructing regional summaries of the sequence and patterns of climate change during the last interglacial-glacial cycle are: (i) well-dated, high resolution palaeoenvironmental data-sets based on multi-disciplinary investigations; (ii) the construction of sophisticated databases able to store, and facilitate analysis of, such complex data-sets; and (iii) the development of closer links between the ‘palaeo-data’and global climate modelling communities, in order to test ideas about the nature and causes of abrupt climate changes. In this review we examine the nature of the palaeo-environmental data generated by studies conducted within the Mid-Latitude Europe sector of PEP III. The review is restricted to Time Stream 2 only (Gasse and Battarbee, this volume).