Some 115 thousand years ago the world as we know it today shifted into a much colder glacial mode which culminated with huge ice sheets reaching as far south as New York, Berlin and St. Petersburg. The numerical climate models, used to predict the next century climate, were as yet unable to explain what happened. The reader of the book gains a detailed picture of what is known on the most important episodes of the past climate history, what to expect during the transition into a glacial climate mode, and which aspects and elements of the climate system seem mostsusceptible to change. The climate modelers will realize that the long term history of natural climate variations may hold important clues to the mechanism of climate changes which should be taken in account if the near future CO2 rich climate have to be predicted with any degree ofreliability.

Inhalt
Interglacial-glacial transitions.- How accurate are the U-Th ages obtained by mass spectrometry on coral terraces?.- Transitions from interglacial to glacial in the pollen record from Valle Di Castiglione (Roma).- Interglacial/glacial transitions recorded from middle and young Pleistocene sections of eastern Lower Saxony/Germany.- Climate changes during and at the end of the interglacials of the Cromerian Complex.- Interglacial to glacial climatic change: Observations from selected Colombian pollen records.- The Montaigu Event: An abrupt climatic change during the Early Wurm in Europe.- Vegetational and climatic transitions between interglacial and glacial periods during the last 1 Million years in northern Greece.- Duration and vegetation dynamic of the Nogaret Interglacial (-1.9 Ma, S. of France) Tentative correlation with stage 75.- Climate record in cave deposits: The Atapuerca TD case.- Marine palynology of interglacial-glacial transitions.- A long marine Eemian-Weichselian shelf record in north Denmark, Scandinavia.- The Norwegian Sea record of the last interglacial to glacial transition.- Abrupt color changes in isotope stage 5 in North Atlantic deep sea cores: Implications for rapid change of climate-driven events.- Global climate change: A three million year perspective.- Transition from the Sangamon interglaciation to the Wisconsin glaciation along the southeastern margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, North America.- The Caspian transgression as an indicator of the interglacial-glacial transition.- Working hypotheses for glaciation/deglaciation mechanism.- Recent temperature trends: Are they reinforced by insolation shifts?.- Insolation regime of the warm to cold transitions.- Author's Index.- Subject's Index.