“The award highlights the importance of climate change and the need for action to meet the challenge that it presents,” a delighted Dr Pachauri, who is also director general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), said soon after the IPCC was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice-President, Mr Al Gore.

The Nobel Prize committee cited “their efforts to build up and disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change”. It highlighted a series of scientific reports issued over the last two decades by the IPCC, which comprises more than 2,000 leading climate change scientists. The reports had “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and warming”, the committee said.