An Introduction to the KIHZ Project The description of the climate system and the quantification of its natural variability and dynamics is essential to assess an ongoing anthropogenic cli mate change and to validate climate and biogeochemical models to allow for reliable projections into the future. Because the spatio-temporal coverage of direct meteorological observations is rather limited, high-resolution and ab solutely dated climate archives represent the only key to a quantification of seasonal to millenial climate variations in the past. Furthermore, climate mod els provide insights into the major processes and causes relevant for climate variability on these time scales. Both approaches represent one side of the same medal, however melting both sides down to one combined effort is often hampered by obstacles defined by the different nature of the approaches. For instance, General Circulation Models (GCMs) per se deal with spatially resolved data representing real climate variables in the model world (such as temperature or precipitation) with each model run reflecting one possible realization of climate history under given boundary conditions. In contrast, the records of natural climate archives are influenced by climate variations as they took place in reality, however, are often representative of local climate conditions only. Moreover, the climate information deduced from natural archives is in nearly all cases based on climate proxies, whose relationship to real climate variables, the so called transfer function, has to be established beforehand.

Integrative approach of geoscientists and climate modellers Analyses natural climate variability Describes reconstructions of past climate by using proxy data Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
1 The Holocene: Considerations with Regard to its Climate and Climate Archives.- 2 Nonlinear Dynamics of the Climate System.- 3 A Discourse About Quasi-realistic Climate Models and Their Applications in Paleoclimatic Studies.- 4 Holocene Climate Variability from Model Simulations State of the Art.- 5 Marine Paleoclimatology Motivation, Tools, and Results.- 6 Corals as Climate Archive.- 7 Annually Laminated Lake Sediments and Their Palaeoclimatic Relevance.- 8 Interpreting Climate Proxies from Tree-rings.- 9 The Environmental and Climate Record in Polar Ice Cores.- 10 Reconstructing Large-scale Variability from Palaeoclimatic Evidence by Means of Data Assimilation Through Upscaling and Nudging (DATUN).- 11 Mid- to Late Holocene Lake Ecosystem Response to Catchment and Climatic Changes A Detailed Varve Analysis of Lake Holzmaar (Germany).- 12 Holocene Palaeoclimate in the SaharoArabian Desert.- 13 Transfer Functions for Paleoclimate Reconstructions Theory and Methods.- 14 Transfer Functions for Paleoclimate Reconstructions Applications.- 15 Climate Information from Stable Hydrogen and Carbon Isotopes of C3 Plants Growth Chamber Experiments and Field Observations.- 16 Detection of Climate Modes as Recorded in a Seasonal-resolution Coral Record Covering the Last 250 Years.- 17 Phase Stability of the Solar Schwabe Cycle in Lake Holzmaar, Germany, and GISP2, Greenland, between 10,000 and 9,000 cal. BP.- 18 Variable Freshwater Input to the Arctic Ocean During the Holocene: Implications for Large-Scale Ocean-Sea Ice Dynamics as Simulated by a Circulation Model.- 19 Forced Climate Variability During the Last Millennium with the Earth System Model CLIMBER-2.- 20 The Contribution of High-resolution Magnetostratigraphic Analyses to PaleoclimaticReconstructions.- 21 Internal Climate Variability in Global and Regional Climate Models.- 22 Climate Diagnostics by Adjoint Modelling: A Feasibility Study.- 23 Evidence for the Climate During the Late Maunder Minimum from Proxy Data and Model Simulations Available Within KIHZ.- References.