The description of rapid climatic changes during the last glacial period at high northern latitudes has been largely documented through Greenland ice cores that are unique climatic and environmental records. However, Greenland ice isotopic records are biased temperature proxies and it is still a matter of debate whether changes in the high latitudes lead or lag rapid changes elsewhere. We focus here on the study of the mid-glacial Dansgaard Oeschger event 12 (45 ky BP) associated to a large δ18Oice change in the GRIP (GReenland Ice core Project) ice core. We use combined measurements of CH4, δ15N and δ40Ar in entrapped air associated with a recently developed firn densification and heat diffusion model to infer (i) the phasing between methane and temperature increases and (ii) the amplitude of the temperature change. Our method enables us to overcome the difficulty linked with rapid accumulation change in quantifying the temperature change. We obtain a 12±2.5 °C temperature increase at the beginning of DO event 12 thus confirming that the conventional use of water isotopes in the Greenland ice cores largely underestimates the actual amplitude of rapid temperature change in central Greenland. In agreement with previous studies, methane and temperature increase are in phase at the sampling resolution of that part of our profile (90 years). © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.