Because of the remoteness of the Antarctic and Arctic regions and extensive ice cover, climate archives are low in number and limited in spatial coverage and temporal resolution compared to other regions of the world. Recently, major advances in our understanding of Earth's past and future climate, have been made through the recovery of well-dated marine/lacustrine sedimentary and ice core archives from the polarregions.

These records stem largely from three international drilling initiatives: (1) the shallow (e.g. ITASE) and deep ice coring programs (e.g. EPICA, NGRIP, NEEM), (2) the ocean drilling programs (e.g. IODP, IMAGES, SHALDRIL) and (3) terrestrial (e.g. ICDP) and marine (e.g.  ANDRILL).  continental margin drilling programs. Major IPY programs studying Holocene climate change also inform us of climate system variability at regional scales. 

This session will provide an update on new knowledge of Cenozoic to Recent polar climate dynamics and processes at all temporal scales, and their inter-connections with the global climate system. Emphasis will be placed on (i) new datasets and the application of new climate proxies, (ii) advances in  numerical ice sheet and global climate models, with special emphasis on integrating data and models, and (iii) reconciling proximal polar climate archives with far-field paleoclimate and sea-level records.