I. Introduction.- Abrupt climatic change - an introduction.- Air-sea interaction processes as models for abrupt climatic changes.- How to recognize an abrupt climatic change?.- The rapidity of CO2-induced climatic change: observations, model results and palaeoclimatic implications.- II. The Last Millennium.- The explosive volcanic eruption record in Northern Hemisphere temperature records.- Decadalscale patterns of climatic change over eastern North America inferred from tree rings.- Factors controlling free air and ocean temperature of the last 30 years and extrapolation to the past.- Summer temperature changes from tree rings in the Mediterranean area during the last 800 years.- Evidence of abrupt climatic change during the last 1,500 years recorded in ice cores from the tropical Quelccaya Ice Cap, Peru.- III. Abrupt Climatic Change during the Holocene.- The Late-Quaternary climate of the western Amazon Basin.- Late Holocene morphological changes in a Jamaican Land Snail: evidence for changes in rainfall.- Indications for Abrupt Holocene Climatic Change: Late Holocene oxygen isotope stratigraphy of the Great Salt Lake, Utah.- Pollen time series and Holocene climate variability of the midwest United States.- IV. Glacial-Holocene Transition: Land Records.- Fossil beetle assemblages as evidence for sudden and intense climatic changes in the British Isles during the last 45,000 years.- On the duration of the interglacial to glacial transition at the end of the Eemian Interglacial (Deep Sea Stage 5 e): botanical and sedimentological evidence.- The Alleröd/Younger Dryas boundary.- Movement of the desert boundary in the Levant from latest Pleistocene to Early Holocene.- Younger Dryas in North America - modeling, data analysis, and re-evaluation.- The Younger Dryas in southwestern Europe: an abrupt climatic change as evidenced from pollen records.- Aridification and abrupt climatic events on the Saharan northern and southern margins, 20,000 Y BPto Present.- V. Glacial-Holocene Transition: Ice Core Record.- Ice core evidence of abrupt climatic changes.- Abrupt climatic changes: the Antarctic ice record during the late Pleistocene.- Environmental changes during last deglaciation inferred from chemical analysis of the Dome C ice core.- VI. Glacial-Holocene Transition: Deep-Sea Record.- Bioturbation effects on abrupt climatic changes recorded in deep sea sediments. Correlation between ?18O profiles and accelerator 14C dating.- Glacial-Holocene transition: climate pulsations and sporadic shutdown of NADW production.- Rapid changes in the inflow of Atlantic water into the Norwegian Sea at the end of the last glaciation.- Paleoproductivity of oceanic upwelling and the effect on atmospheric CO2 and climatic change during deglaciation times.- VII. Modeling Climate and Its Record.- Modeling future climate change affecting nuclear waste disposal: An outline.- Detection of abrupt climatic changes in deep-sea sediment cores: the forward problem.- Abrupt terminations of Late Pleistocene ice ages: a simple Milankovitch explanation.- Simulation of paleoclimatic tracers using atmospheric general circulation models.- Climate sensitivity and past climates: evidence from numerical studies.- A climate model intercomparison for the Younger Dryas and its implications for paleoclimatic data collection.