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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 15 March 2017 to Question 66793, whether the climate models referred to rely on computer simulations only rather than observational evidence.

The evidence that present rates of decline in the extent of Arctic sea ice are not consistent with reasonably expected natural variability does not rely on computer simulations alone. Detection of the decline is based on observations. Both observations and models are used to estimate natural variability in the climate system, and attribute the most likely cause for the detected decline.