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Written question asked by David Drew (Labour) on Monday, 13 March 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 15 March 2006. It was answered by Elliot Morley (Labour) on Thursday, 16 March 2006 on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Temperature Changes

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what (a) minimum and (b) maximum temperature change the Hadley Centre has predicted for each decade of the next 100 years.
Answer

The Hadley Centre has provided Defra with scenarios of global and UK temperature change, based on possible future greenhouse gas emissions generated by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change marker emissions scenarios; and scaled from the UKCIP02 scenarios for the 21st century. The IPCC emissions scenarios range from a low population growth, clean technology, convergent world (B1), to a high population growth, energy intensive technology world (A1FI). Forecast temperature changes derived in this way are subject to uncertainties in future emissions and in climate modelling. However, they provide a range of plausible futures. It is important to note that no one scenario is considered any more likely than any other.Estimates of global and UK minimum and maximum temperature changes consistent with IPCC scenarios and Hadley Centre model predictions are shown below. These are based on one model from the Hadley Centre and show a smaller range of temperature change than in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. The temperature increases shown below are relative to 1961–90 mean temperatures (effectively relative to 1975 and hence the apparent large initial rise between then and the mid-2010s). The global temperature rise between 1900 and 1975 of approximately 0.2 oC needs to be added in order to estimate changes relative to pre-industrial temperature levels.

Low High
Decade Global UK Global UK
2010 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.7
2020 0.8 0.8 1.0 0.9
2030 1.0 1.0 1.3 1.2
2040 1.2 1.2 1.7 1.6
2050 1.5 1.4 2.2 2.1
2060 1.7 1.6 2.8 2.6
2070 1.9 1.8 3.4 3.1
2080 2.1 2.0 4.0 3.7
2090 2.2 2.1 4.6 4.3
(2) Minimum (Scenario B1) Temperature Rises (oC)
(3) Maximum (Scenario A1FI) Temperature Rises (oC)

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
59054; 443 c2400-1W;443 c2400-1W
Session
2005-06
Subjects
Climate change Temperature
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk