Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of whether present rates of decline in the extent of Arctic sea ice are consistent with reasonably expected natural variability.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has not made its own assessment of the above question.

Evidence that present rates of decline in the extent of Arctic sea ice are not consistent with reasonably expected natural variability is synthesised in the 5^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5). Long-term records of Arctic sea ice extent in this report show that the decline from 1980 onwards lies outside of what would be expected from natural variability alone. IPCC AR5 reports high confidence that human influences are very likely (>90% probability) to have contributed to the observed Arctic sea ice loss since 1980.