Mediterranean Climate Variability and Predictability (MEDCLIVAR; http://www.medclivar.eu) is a program that coordinates and promotes research on different aspects of Mediterranean climate. The main MEDCLIVAR goals include the reconstruction of past climate, describing patterns and mechanisms characterizing climate space‐time variability, extremes at different time and space scales, coupled climate model/empirical reconstruction comparisons, seasonal forecasting, and the identification of the forcings responsible for the observed changes. The program has been endorsed by CLIVAR (Climate Variability and Predictability project) and is funded by the European Science Foundation.The main purpose of this first MEDCLIVAR workshop was to identify sources of early instrumental data and natural and documentary climate proxies that had not been previously explored and/or identified and that could be relevant for the reconstruction of the Mediterranean climate or weather extremes covering the past millennia. A key focus was on weather and climate information with high temporal (annual or higher) and spatial resolution as well as the potential to resolve past climate variability based on low‐resolution proxies covering the past tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.