The climate of the Last Glacial Maximum cold period (LGM; 23–19 thousand years ago) provides the means for evaluating the response of the climate system to large perturbations. It turns out that various coupled climate models similar to those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yield very different results on, for example, Atlantic Ocean meridional overturning rates during the LGM (see B. L. Otto-Bliesner et al., Geophys. Res., Lett., 34, L12706, doi:10.1029/2007GL029475). A 3-day workshop brought together about 30 international paleoclimatologists to create an inventory of existing paleoceanographic records for the LGM and explore the potential of individual proxies that provide information about the origin, distribution, and circulation rates of deep water and serve as a benchmark for testing climate models.