In fact, she did:

“Through UKCP09 [UK Climate Predictions 2009] the Met Office has provided the world’s most comprehensive regional climate projections with a unique assessment of the possible changes to our climate through the rest of this century.

“For the first time businesses and other organisations have the tools to help them make risk-based decisions to adapt to the challenges of our changing climate.”

So what’s changed since last year? Well one thing is that Julia Slingo has a new job. She has been appointed as Chief Scientist at the Met Office. So far as I know, the limitations that lack of computing power place on the accuracy and resolution of models are just the same.

During a rather bad-tempered interview on Thursday evening’s Newsnight, Kirsty Wark asked Hilary Benn, the UK Environment Secretary, why local authorities were being told to use the Met Office predictions as a template for infrastructure planning when their report had not been peer reviewed and the authors had postponed publication of information about the methodology that they had used. She also told him that there was considerable concern among other climate scientists about the Met Office’s research.

Myles Allen made an appearance on the programme warning that local authorities should be very wary about planning infrastructure projects on the basis of climate models unless they were sure that the science was robust.

Mr Benn parroted the usual mantras without addressing the questions, and looked as though he would have much preferred to be elsewhere. ®

This article originally appeared on the Harmless Sky blog. Reprinted with permission.

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