To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change pursuant to the answer of 23 March 2012, Official Report, columns 942-3W, on climate change, what assessment he has made of the trends in global temperature figures.

The latest estimates of global average surface temperatures since 1997, produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre, indicate that the trend in global temperatures was 0.09° C per decade over the period 1998 to 2010; The underlying trend in temperature since 1979 was 0.17° C per decade. Most of the warming since the middle of the last century was very likely due to human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases. However natural variations in the climate system, such as changes in solar radiation, volcanic activity and large scale fluctuations in ocean currents, are expected to lead to variances from the long-term underlying trend over relatively short timescales of a decade or so.

2001 to 2010 was the warmest 10-year period on record, since records began in 1850, while 2005 and 2010 were the two equal warmest individual years.