IPCC inquiry to be unveiled this month

LONDON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- The result of an independent probe into the work of a top U.N. panel of climate scientists will be unveiled by the end of this month.

The review will be released in New York on Aug. 30, the InterAcademy Council that conducted the review said in a statement posted on its Web site Friday.

The IAC said it would hand the review into "processes and procedures" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the top U.N. climate scientist panel, to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri.

Comprising 15 leading science academies, the IAC has been reviewing the IPCC's work for the past five months.

The review was requested after a series of embarrassing errors was uncovered in the IPCC's 2007 climate report.

"We recognize the criticism that has been leveled at us and the need to respond," Pachauri said in a statement released in February.

The IPCC, a panel created by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for its 2007 report. Yet in February, the IPCC admitted the report included a false claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. The organization had used data from a World Wildlife Fund report without double-checking, the panel admitted.

Climate skeptics in the aftermath of the revelation launched severe attacks on the panel and have questioned its credibility.

The 2007 report was widely hailed as the most comprehensive and detailed scientific account of climate change. It formed a basis for ongoing U.N. negotiations to produce a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012.

Climate science received a further blow when e-mail exchanges -- some say they were leaked, others claim they were stolen -- indicated that scientists at Britain's University of East Anglia might have suppressed data pointing to global cooling.

However, a six-month inquiry into the climate scientists that ended last month dismissed most of the accusations. Scientists did not fudge results or silence critics but were too quick to dismiss outside views, the review concluded.

Meanwhile, global climate negotiations remain deadlocked after the Copenhagen climate summit last year ended without a globally binding climate protection agreement.

Developing nations have resisted a legally binding treaty because they claim rich nations that have benefited from emitting greenhouse gases during the past decades should shoulder more of the burden.

Industrialized countries argue the developing nations need to commit to concrete reduction targets to enable a global effort.