On 3 October 2013, the former Minister for Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), agreed to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) publishing a revised Approved Code of Practice and guidance on the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. This contains clear information and guidance on employers' responsibilities to maintain reasonable temperatures in the workplace.

HSE's published Enforcement Policy Statement applies to this area, and I have not issued any specific guidance on enforcement measures in relation to workplace temperatures.

The Met Office published its first experimental decadal forecast in 2007 and has issued updates looking five to ten years ahead on its web site since December 2009; no update to the initialised forecast was supplied to DECC in 2008. These forecasts are not intended to predict a particular year's global temperature as year-to-year variations in global temperature are dominated by the effects of the El Nino Southern Oscillation, which is not predictable more than a year ahead. Instead, they aim to forecast slow fluctuations in the climate system over the next few years.

Nevertheless, values for individual years can be extracted and the very first forecast, made in 2007, suggested that 2013 would likely be 0.53 to 0.89 degrees C (90% confidence) warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average. No equivalent estimate is currently available for 2018 as the latest five-year forecast, issued in December 2012, is for the period 2013 to 2017¹. However, this shows that the Earth is expected to maintain the record warmth that has been observed over the last decade, with the possibility that new record global temperatures may be reached in the next five years.

Met Office five-year forecasts are assessed once the verifying observations are available.¹

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/decadal-forecasting

The Met Office published its first experimental decadal forecast in 2007 and has issued updates looking five to ten years ahead on its web site since December 2009; no update to the initialised forecast was supplied to DECC in 2008. These forecasts are not intended to predict a particular year's global temperature as year-to-year variations in global temperature are dominated by the effects of the El Nino Southern Oscillation, which is not predictable more than a year ahead. Instead, they aim to forecast slow fluctuations in the climate system over the next few years.

Nevertheless, values for individual years can be extracted and the very first forecast, made in 2007, suggested that 2013 would likely be 0.53 to 0.89 degrees C (90% confidence) warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average. No equivalent estimate is currently available for 2018 as the latest five-year forecast, issued in December 2012, is for the period 2013 to 2017¹. However, this shows that the Earth is expected to maintain the record warmth that has been observed over the last decade, with the possibility that new record global temperatures may be reached in the next five years.

Met Office five-year forecasts are assessed once the verifying observations are available.¹

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/decadal-forecasting

The world has warmed by about 0.8 degrees Celsius since the 19th century¹. This warming was reported to be statistically significant by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in Section 3.2 of its Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report.

Met Office (2013). The recent pause in global warming (1); What do observations of the climate system tell us?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/e/f/Paper1_Observing_changes_in_the_climate_system.PDF

The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, which cover most spaces in schools, require that the temperature in all workplaces inside buildings is reasonable during working hours. While the Approved Code of Practice, which accompanies these regulations, does say that the temperature in workrooms should normally be at least 16 degrees Celsius, it does not indicate what a maximum temperature should be.

There are no plans to introduce a maximum temperature in schools.

The code of practice for the prevention and treatment of climactic injuries in the armed forces for land based activities, including training, exercises and operations, is contained in the Joint Service Publication (JSP) 539.

The heat injury/illness sections of the JSP are kept under regular review by the Heat Injuries Working Group: this working group has representatives from all three services as well as subject matter experts.

The JSP was revised fully in 2012 and published in November 2012.

I have asked the chief executive officer of the Met Office to respond direct to the noble Lord.

Letter from John Hirst, Chief Executive of the Met Office, to Lord Hunt of Chesterton, dated 17 January 2013.

I am replying on behalf of the Met Office to your Parliamentary Question tabled on 11 January 2013, HL4540 to Her Majesty's Government.

The Met Office's estimates of global average land surface air temperatures and global average sea surface temperatures are based on the CRUTEM4 dataset, which is produced in collaboration with the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, and the HadSST3 dataset, respectively.

Global average temperatures from the CRUTEM4 and HadsSST3 datasets, for the most recent 10 years of available data, are shown in the following table, expressed as anomalies relative to average temperatures in the period 1961 to 1990.

In line with our understanding of the mechanisms of climate change, the land surface has been observed to warm faster than the sea surface. Indeed observations show that since 1970 globally the rise in temperature over land has been 0.26 °C per decade, compared to 0.13 °C per decade for sea.

The Met Office does not compile estimates of observed sea level rise. This is done by other organisations, such as the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) which has been responsible for the collection, publication, analysis and interpretation of sea level data from the global network of tide gauges for several decades.

Recent peer reviewed research¹ indicates a global mean observed sea level rise Met Office from 1972 to 2008 of 1.8 ± 0.2 mm per year from tide gauges alone and 2.1 ± 0.2 mm per year from a combination of tide gauges and altimeter observations. Estimates for the period 1993 to 2008 from satellite altimeter and tide gauge observations shows a rate of 3.22 ± 0.41 mm per year, but it is not yet clear if this higher recent rate is part of a sustained long-term acceleration.

I hope this helps.¹ Church, John A; White, Neil J; Konikow, Leonard F; et al (2011), Revisiting the Earth's sea-level and energy budgets from 1961 to 2008, Geophysical Research Letters, 38, L18601, doi: 10.1029/2011GL048794.