Years of speculation, newly recognized mechanisms for interactions, and a sparse but expanding number of observations support some form of link between geomagnetic field variability and climate change and/or orbital cycles. Early paleomagnetic observations only hinted at the links and failed to withstand scrutiny for a number of reasons including poor data quality, poor age control, poor resolution of short-term geomagnetic directional variability over sufficiently long time periods, and a reliance on relative paleointensity records. Even though Milankovitch periodicities have been observed in the latter, proving that these are not influenced by climatically induced lithologic changes rather than by geomagnetic field variability is difficult. At this point, the speculation has been more interesting that the evidence has been convincing. New long continuous records of short-term paleomagnetic directional variability that span the past 1 m.y., however, show intriguing correlations of geomagnetic excursions with precession cycles and with deglacials. The changes in directions for these excursions are too large to be attributed to lithologic variations nor can they be attributed to local sedimentary or tectonic processes as the excursion are observed regionally or globally. Although such correlations might have been regarded as fortuitous in the past, age constraints have improved significantly by obtaining stable isotope records or other climate proxies directly from the same stratigraphic sections as the geomagnetic records. Furthermore, speculation about mechanisms for geomagnetic links to climate and orbital cycles have been succeeded by climate studies that have found that cloud formation is associated with the amount of cosmogenic radiation, which is largely controlled by the geomagnetic field. Similarly, precession had been disregarded as a driving force for the geodynamo, but recent modeling shows that such conclusions were premature. Thus, causal relationships between geomagnetic field variability, climate change, and orbital cycles are not unexpected nor are they unobserved.