A new detailed oxygen-18 record measured on surface-ice samples from a West Greenland ice-margin location reveals the hitherto longest climatic record from the Greenland ice sheet, spanning the last c. 150,000 years. The new record implies that the Greenland deep ice-core records from Dye3 and Camp Century need to be re-interpreted. A comparison with the deuterium record from the Vostok deep ice core, Antarctica indicates that climate behaved differently in the northern and southern hemispheres during the last glacial/interglacial cycle, with major differences occurring in Emiliani isotopic stage 5. © 1991, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.. All rights reserved.