Emissions caused by humans 'definitely' causing climate change

There can be no doubt that emissions generated by human activities are contributing to global climate change, the head of the United Nations' (UN's) climate panel has said.

In an interview with the BBC, Rajendra Pachauri said that scientists are now more certain than ever that greenhouse gases from human activities are heating the planet, and that it may be too late to reverse the decline.

It comes as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is regarded as the planet's foremost authority on the greenhouse effect, releases its most comprehensive study to date this weekend.

The document is set to be published in Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday (September 27th) and will predict a grim outlook for climate change in the decades ahead.

As well as making long-term projections for the melting of Arctic sea ice, the study will warn about the danger of ocean acidification, and Mr Pachauri says that experts are now 95 per cent certain that global warming is the fault of mankind.

"The scientific evidence of climate change has strengthened year after year, leaving few uncertainties apart from the serious consequences," he added.

Meanwhile, Thomas Stocker, co-chairman of the working group that produced the study, said that climate change is one of the "greatest challenges of our time".

"Because this change threatens our primary resources, land and water - in short, because it threatens our only home - we must face this challenge," he added.

In 2007, the IPCC said it was 90 per cent sure that humans were to blame for climate change, but has upped this probability metric, noting that the slowing in warming since 1998 was simply down to lower-than-expected solar activity and a temporary cooling cycle in the weather system, which subsequently tempered the impact of human activity.

The panel has based its projections on hundreds of thousands of measurements taken in the atmosphere, on land, in ice, in the sea and from space, and says the new study is set to be the most exhaustive document to date on mankind's impact on climate change.