In our experiment, the temperatures in Scandinavia were highest during the first 500 years of the experiment, after which they decrease almost linearly towards the preindustrial climate (Fig.  5 a, b and Table  1 ).

In addition, the interannual variability (as expressed by the standard deviations in Table  1 ) increases considerably, most notably in winter during the last 4 kyr.

In the July temperature evolution, a marked increase in the interannual variability is noted after 5 kyr BP, which is even more expressed than in the result of northern Europe (see Table  1 ), although no clear decadal-scale cold excursions are noted..

In contrast to North America and northern Europe, no significant increase in temporal variability is found in Greenland (Table  1 )..

According to the simulation results, most of our study area experiences a decrease in summer precipitation (Fig.  9 ), whereas the winter precipitation remains at approximately the same level (Table  1 ).

Scandinavia forms an exception, as the summer precipitation is not changing here (Fig.  10 a and Table  1 ), although locally a decrease is noted on the 0 –9 k-anomaly map (Norwegian coast, Fig.  9 ).

In the other regions, the reductions in summer precipitation over 9 kyr are much more substantial (29, 7 and 17% for North America, Greenland and northern Eurasia, respectively, Fig.  10 b–d and Table  1 ).

an opposite trend to what was found for temperature (Table  1 )..

Our model results are in good agreement with this range of summer cooling, as the July temperatures are 1.2°C warmer in the early part of the experiment (9–7 kyr BP) compared to the last 0.5 kyr (Table  1 )..

Europe receives its moisture from the Northern Atlantic and the eastern Nordic Seas, both of which remained ice-free throughout the experiment, possibly explaining why the reduction in precipitation is not as striking here (Table  1 )..

In the model, the net effect of the opposite changes in the two regions is a small, statistically insignificant increase in the export of NADW out of the Atlantic (Table  1 )..

This is clearly evident in the temperatures in Scandinavia and North America (Figs.  5 , 6 and Table  1 ), in the different components of the ocean circulation in the Nordic Seas (Fig.  14 and Table  2 ) and in the sea-ice evolution (Table  2 ).