HC Deb 13 December 1989 vol 163 c716W
48. Dr. Kim Howells

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans the Government have to increase the monitoring of global warming.

Mr. Trippier

The science review working group of the WMO/UNEP intergovernmental panel on climate change, chaired by the United Kingdom, is assessing the requirements for monitoring with regard to global warming and climate change. The Government will take the panel's report, due in the autumn of 1990, into account in planning appropriate monitoring programmes.

119. Mrs. Fyfe

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if any assessment has been made of the contribution to global warming made by nitrate and nitrate fertilisers.

Mr. Trippier

Assessments of the effect of fertiliser use, including those containing nitrates, on the emission of nitrous oxide from soil have been made but are subject to great uncertainty. The state of understanding of emissions and future concentrations of all the major greenhouse gases is one of the topics included in the science review, chaired by the United Kingdom, of the intergovernmental panel on climate change which will report in the autumn of 1990.