Ancient interglacials as analogues of the present: Reconstructing the past variability for understanding and modelling the future climate

Past interglacials can be seen as analogues for the present interglacial and its future evolution. Here we present some results regarding the climate and dynamics of two past interglacial periods, the MIS5 (ca. 130 ka) and the MIS19 (ca. 790 ka), as reconstructed from well-dated oxygen stable isotopes composition (dO) records from sedimentary carbonates from central Italy. Carbonates dO is used to infer past hydrological changes (mostly rainfall amount variability), that can be tracked at regional and extra-regional scale, allowing to shed light on mechanisms of abrupt climate variability and on the sensitivity of the climate systems to different combinations of boundary conditions.