This volume summarizes the present knowledge of the various ways in which continental ice and sea ice both respond to, and in turn control climate system evolution. Interdisciplinary as this field is the contributions come from glaciologists, physical oceanographers, atmospheric general circulaltion modellers, experts on the reconstruction of past climates using data from ice cores, paleoceanographers and palynologists. The focus is on the thermohaline circulation: the influence of the deep circulation of the oceans upon the long time scale oscillation of planetary climate.