Skorokhod's M1 topology is defined for càdlàg paths taking values in the space of tempered distributions (more generally, in the dual of a countably Hilbertian nuclear space). Compactness and tightness characterisations are derived which allow us to study a collection of stochastic processes through their projections on the familiar space of real-valued càdlàg processes. It is shown how this topological space can be used in analysing the convergence of empirical process approximations to distribution-valued evolution equations with Dirichlet boundary conditions.