RECENT studies of Greenland ice cores(1-3) and North Atlantic deepsea sediments(4,5) have yielded evidence for rapid changes in climate during the last glaciation and the preceding interglacial period, Similar variability has been observed in lake deposits in France(6) and in sediments from the California margin(7) but there are no records of rapid climate variability from the high-latitude North Pacific region, Here we present two high-resolution records of the input of ice-rafted detritus to the sub-arctic Pacific Ocean, derived from two sediment cores using a gamma-ray attenuation technique that provides a measure of the ratio of biogenic opal to terrigenous material. The temporal variability of ice rafting is similar to that of the oxygen isotope record of the GRIP Greenland ice core(1), implying that the rapid climate variability of the circum-Atlantic region over the past 95,000 years could be a circumpolar phenomenon.