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This paper deals with questions of paleogeography of the Black sea’s coast in the late Holocene on the basis of new data that include the lithology, palynology and geochronology of coastal marine, lagoon and deltaic sediments. The palynological results have shown that the warmest and dry conditions prevailed in the intervals 4100-3950, 3500-3300/3200, 2800-2400, 1650-1300 and 1000-900/800 yrs BP. The maxima of humidity for the studied period correspond with the chronological intervals 4500-4300 and 3950-3500 yrs BP, coinciding with the spread of forest communities. During an interval from 2500 up to 1500 BP (V centuries BC – V centuries AD) the dominance of the steppes formation was interrupted by phases of wetter climate which caused at first expansion of the wood-steppe vegetation, and then wide circulation of broad-leaved woods in the landscape. The palynological data have revealed a peculiarity that is connected to the economic activity of the local population.

To improve our understanding of climate variability on decadal to centennial time-scales, it is crucial to use a hierarchy of climate models in addition to palaeoclimate reconstructions based on proxy data. Climate models give a physically consistent overview of the global climate on all time-scales. They are useful tools in palaeoclimatology, since: (i) they can be used to test hypotheses that have been inferred from palaeo-data; and (ii) they can provide plausible explanations of observed phenomena (e.g., Isarin and Renssen (1999), Kohfeld and Harrison (2000)). In recent years, considerable progress in palaeoclimate modelling has been made with the extensive use of models that consider the coupling of the different components of the climate system (atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice, vegetation). The aim of this paper is to inform the palaeo-data community on recent developments in palaeoclimate modelling, with special reference to the Holocene climate. In the first section, different model types and experiments are discussed, together with a short overview of Holocene climate modelling studies and differences between models and palaeo-data. In the second section, three important issues are further illustrated by discussing in detail three studies that use state-of-the-art models.