Dansgaard-Oeschger events
Abrupt warming events followed by gradual cooling. The abrupt warming and gradual cooling is primarily seen in Greenland ice cores and in palaeoclimate records from the nearby North Atlantic, while a more general warming followed by a gradual cooling has been observed in other areas as well, at intervals of 1.5 to 7 kyr during glacial times.
Definition courtesy of IPCC AR4.
All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.