§ 22. Mr. CorbynTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what assessment his Department has made of global temperature changes. [9369]
§ Mr. MeacherInformation on global temperature changes is assessed and published regularly on behalf of the Government by the UK Meteorological Office in conjunction with the climatic research unit at the university of East Anglia. The latest data available for 1997 show that the global surface temperature for the first half of the year was approximately 0.33 deg C above the 1961–90 average. Global temperatures are, on average about 0.5 deg C warmer now that they were at the end of the last century.