Abstract
Projected changes in climate this century dwarf changes seen during the modern instrumental period. In order to increase credibility, it is important that climate models are shown to match true 'out-of-sample' examples of significant climate change for which evidence exists in the paleo-climate record. However, directly using paleo-climate model/observation comparisons to inform future projections is difficult. With the increased scope of the CMIP5 project including both future and paleo simulations using the same models, we have a unique opportunity to explore how to best make use of this information. I will discuss some of the issues and some preliminary results from these comparisons.