Two government adverts highlighting the risks of climate change have been criticised by the advertising standards watchdog.

The press adverts, sponsored by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), used nursery rhymes – including Jack and Jill and Rub a Dub Dub - to communicate the risks of CO2 emissions.

But the campaign went beyond mainstream scientific consensus in asserting that climate change would cause flooding and drought, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said.

It noted that predictions about the potential global impact of global warming made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "involved uncertainties" that the adverts failed to reflect.

The press ads were part of a broader campaign which included a television commercial in which a small child was read a bedtime story by her father relating the dangers of climate change.

The campaign prompted more than 900 complaints in total, but criticisms of the televised ad were rejected by the ASA, which said that claims made in the ad were consistent with scientific consensus and were not broadcast at times when children were likely to be watching.

Speaking to the BBC, ASA chief executive said the “categorical nature” of statements in the press ads had gone a “bit beyond the evidence” presented by the department.

Climate change secretary Ed Miliband said he accepted the ruling and admitted that the printed adverts could have been “better phrased”, but insisted that the IPCC had found that there was more than a 90 per cent chance that Northern Europe would “experience rainfall” if no action was taken to mitigate global warming.

"The ASA has comprehensively vindicated the accuracy of the TV advert we made and rebuffed those who attempted to use the advertising standards process to question the reality of man-made climate change,” Miliband added.