The El Cañizar de Villarquemado pollen record covers the last part of MIS 6 to the Late Holocene. We use Tolerance-Weighted Averaging Partial Least Squares (TWA-PLS) to reconstruct mean temperature of the coldest month (MTCO) and growing degree days above 0°C (GDD0) and the ratio of annual precipitation to annual potential evapotranspiration (MI), accounting for the ecophysiological effect of changing CO2 on water-use efficiency. Rapid summer warming occurred during the Zeifen-Kattegat Oscillation at the transition to MIS 5. Summers were cold during MIS 4 and MIS 2, but some intervals of MIS 3 had summers as warm as the warmest phases of MIS 5 or the Holocene. Winter temperatures declined from MIS 4 to MIS 2. Changes in temperature seasonality within MIS 5 and MIS 1 are consistent with insolation seasonality changes. Conditions became progressively more humid during MIS 5, and MIS 4 was also humid, although MIS 3 was more arid. Changes in MI and GDD0 are anti-correlated, with increased MI during summer warming intervals. Comparison with other records shows glacial-interglacial changes were not unform across the circum-Mediterranean region, but available quantitative reconstructions are insufficient to determine if east-west differences reflect the circulation-driven precipitation dipole seen in recent decades.

The glacial history of the Tagliamento morainic amphitheater (southeastern Alpine foreland, Italy) during the last glacial maximum (LGM) has been reconstructed by means of a geological survey and drillings, radiocarbon dating and pollen analysis in the amphitheater and in the sandur. Two phases of glacial culmination, separated by a distinct recession, are responsible for glacial landforms and related sediments in the outer part of the amphitheater. The age of the younger advance fits the chronology of the culmination of the last glaciation in the Alps, well established between 24 and 21 cal ka BP (20 to 17.5 14C ka BP), whereas the first pulse between 26.5 and 23 cal ka BP (22 to 21 14C ka BP), previously undated, was usually related to older (pre-LGM) glaciations by previous authors. Here, the first pulse is the most extensive LGM culmination, but is often buried by the subsequent pulse. The onset and final recession of the late Würm Alpine glaciation in the Tagliamento amphitheater are synchronous with the established global glacial maximum between 30 and 19 cal ka BP. The two-fold LGM glacial oscillation is interpreted as a millennial-scale modulation within the late Würm glaciation, caused by oscillations in inputs of southerly atmospheric airflows related to Dansgaard–Oeschger cycles. Phases of enhanced southerly circulation promoted increased rainfall and ice accumulation in the southern Alps.