The comparison of palaeoclimate records on their own independent timescales is central to the work of the INTIMATE (INTegrating Ice core, MArine and TErrestrial records) network. For the North Atlantic region, an event stratigraphy has been established from the high-precision Greenland ice-core records and the integrated GICCO5 chronology. This stratotype provides a palaeoclimate signal to which the timing and nature of palaeoenvironmental change recorded in marine and terrestrial archives can be compared. To facilitate this wider comparison, without assuming synchroneity of climatic change/proxy response, INTIMATE has also focussed on the development of tools to achieve this. In particular the use of time-parallel marker horizons e.g. tephra layers (volcanic ash). Coupled with the recent temporal extension of the Greenland stratotype, as part of this special issue, we present an updated INTIMATE event stratigraphy highlighting key tephra horizons used for correlation across Europe and the North Atlantic. We discuss the advantages of such an approach, and the key challenges for the further integration of terrestrial palaeoenvironmental records with those from ice cores and the marine realm.