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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Verma on 26 June 2013 (WA139) and the briefing paper by the Chief Scientist of the Met Office <i>Statistical Models and the Global Temperature Record</i>, cited in the Written Answer, in the light of the use of such models in textbooks, as well as in over a hundred research papers, why they consider integrated models for the global temperature series to be inappropriate; and why the linear trend model that is studied in the briefing paper is not also considered to be inappropriate.

As detailed in the briefing paper Statistical Models and the Global Temperature Record by the Chief Scientist of the Met Office, neither integrated nor linear models incorporate knowledge of physical processes that affect global temperature change. Therefore, for a full picture of the science behind our changing climate, we do not rely solely upon statistical tests to assess changes in climate, but also use our physical understanding of how the climate system works embedded in our physical climate simulations.