The Eemian (the Last Interglacial; ca. 129-116 thousand years ago) presents a testbed for assessing environmental responses and climate feedbacks under warmer-than-present boundary conditions. However, climate syntheses for the Eemian remain hampered by lack of data from the high-latitude land areas, masking the climate response and feedbacks in the Arctic. Here we present a high-resolution (sub-centennial) record of Eemian palaeoclimate from northern Finland, with multi-model reconstructions for July and January air temperature. In contrast with the mid-latitudes of Europe, our data show decoupled seasonal trends with falling July and rising January temperatures over the Eemian, due to orbital and oceanic forcings. This leads to an oceanic Late-Eemian climate, consistent with an earlier hypothesis of glacial inception in Europe. The interglacial is further intersected by two strong cooling and drying events. These abrupt events parallel shifts in marine proxy data, linked to disturbances in the North Atlantic oceanic circulation regime.

Department of Earth Science The Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research and the Jebsen Centre for Deep Sea Research University of Bergen PO Box 7803 N 5020 Bergen Norway

Department of Earth Sciences VU University Amsterdam NL 1081HV Amsterdam The Netherlands

Department of Forest Ecology Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Kamýcká 129 165 21 Praha 6 Czech Republic

Department of Geography University of Wisconsin Madison 550 M Park St Madison WI 53706 USA

Department of Geological Sciences and the Bolin Centre for Climate Research Stockholm University 10691 Stockholm Sweden

Department of Geosciences and Geography University of Helsinki PO Box 64 FI 00014 Helsinki Finland

Department of Natural Science and Environmental Health University College of Southeast Norway N3800 Bø i Telemark Norway

Department of Physical Geography and the Bolin Centre for Climate Research Stockholm University 106 91 Stockholm Sweden

Ecosystem and Landscape Dynamics Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics University of Amsterdam PO Box 94216 1090 GE Amsterdam The Netherlands

Environmental Change Research Unit Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme University of Helsinki PO Box 65 FI 00014 Helsinki Finland

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Substantial light woodland and open vegetation characterized the temperate forest biome before Homo sapiens