Graham Stringer's question to the department of Business Innovation and Skills has received a response, but not an answer. This from Hansard:
Graham Stringer: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills whether the claim that (a) every year since 1998 has been significantly warmer than the temperatures you would expect if there was no warming and (b) for the last three decades the rate of temperature increase is significant made by the Met Office in a climate science briefing sent to the chief scientific adviser on 8 February 2010 was supported by any statistical time-series analysis. [150533]
Michael Fallon: The full statements sent by the Met Office to the chief scientific adviser on 8 February 2010 are (a) every year since 1998 has been significantly warmer than the temperatures you would expect if there was no warming (baseline of 1861-1900) and (b) for the last three decades, the rate of temperature increase is significant even when uncertainties in the observations are factored in.
These statements are based on analysis of HadCRUT3, the global temperature dataset compiled by the Met Office and the university of East Anglia’s climatic research unit.
Reading between the lines I think we can probably say that the advice Julia Slingo has been providing to central government is not based on time series analysis.
Oh dear.