Chaired by: - Hubertus Fischer, Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute & Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, CHCo-Chair:- Eric. W. Wolff, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UKThe ongoing climate warming requires a detailed understanding of global and regional climate variations and forecasting of their future changes using climate models. These changes pertain not only to the average global warming but also to changes in regional climate, circulation patterns and their temporal variability. To decrease the uncertainty in these model predictions, climate models have to be validated using paleoclimate data as provided by natural climate archives. Spatially representative climate modes and teleconnection patterns and their temporal variability allow for this validation and represent the vehicles to contrast rather coarsely resolved climate models to point-wise paleoclimate data.