Palaeoclimatic estimates derived from CLAMP are usually presented as an exact value/number. However, in order to be correct, palaeoclimatic estimates derived from the CLAMP calibration datasets including physiognomic and meteorological characteristics of living vegetation must be expressed as intervals. This study introduces a method for calculating confidence intervals of CLAMP estimates. These intervals are generated separately for each palaeoclimate parameter and dataset of modern calibration sites and will help to interpret the obtained CLAMP results in a statistically sound way.• Key words: palaeoclimate, proxy-data, estimate, CLAMP, STDEV residual, confidence interval. TEODORIDIS, V. & MAZOUCH, P. 2016. How to interpret palaeoclimate CLAMP estimates -is it a number value or an interval range?