| Summary: | As the latest epoch of the Earth’s history, the Holocene is commonly defined as the last 11.7 ka BP (hereafter referred to as ka) and represents a new phase, encompassing the time span of human civilization. The last deglaciation lasted well into the Holocene, implying that the early Holocene was characterized by a large-scale reorganization with transitions in various components of the climate system. Studying the Holocene can provide insights into how the climate system functions, apart from the theoretical contributions to climate history itself. We first conducted sets of simulations with different combinations of climate forcings for 11.5 ka and for the entire Holocene to investigate the response of the climate–ocean system to the main climate forcings. In particular, two possible freshwater flux (FWF) scenarios were further tested considering the relatively large uncertainty in reconstructed ice-sheet melting. Moreover, we compared four Holocene simulations performed with the LOVECLIM, CCSM3, FAMOUS and HadCM3 models by identifying the regions where the multi-model simulations are consistent and where they are not, and analysing the reasons at the two levels (of the models’ variables and of the model principles and physics) where mismatches were found. After this, these multi-model simulations were systematically compared with data-based reconstructions in five regions of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) extratropics, namely Fennoscandia, Greenland, North Canada, Alaska and high-latitude Siberia. Potential uncertainty sources were also analysed in both model simulations and proxy data, and the most probable climate histories were identified with the aid of additional evidence when available. Additionally, the contribution of climate change, together with forest fires and human population size, to the variation in Holocene vegetation cover in Fennoscandia was assessed by employing the variation partitioning method. With effects of climate forcings, including variations in orbital-scale insolation (ORB), melting ...
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