Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what recent assessment his Department has made of the effect of climate change on global sea levels.

The most recent assessment of the effect of climate change on global sea level rise comes from the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, which states that over the period 1901 to 2010 global mean sea level rose by 0.19 [0.17 to 0.21] metres, that since the mid-19th century the rate of sea level rise has been larger than the mean rate over the previous two millennia and that it is very likely that there has been a substantial contribution to the global mean sea level rise since the 1970s from the effects of human activity.