The UN climate panel is set to issue its strongest warning yet on Friday that human activities are causing a damaging global warming that is likely to raise global temperatures by up to 4.5 degree Celsius by the end of this century and cause more heat waves, droughts and rising seas in the immediate future.

The group, the most authoritative on climate change with 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, is also due to say that oceans will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments stabilise greenhouse gas emissions this century.

Scientists and government officials in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been meeting in Paris since Monday to review the report, including a 15-page summary for policymakers.

“The talks are moving forward,” one IPCC official said. The IPCC says it will publish the results on Friday.

The report, increasing certainty that humans are to blame for warming, may put pressure on governments and companies to do more to curb a build-up of greenhouse gases mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

“It is very likely that (human) greenhouse gases caused most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century,” according to a final draft.

“Very likely” means a probability of at least 90 per cent — up from a judgment of “likely”, or a 66 per cent probability, in the previous 2001 report. The report is the first of four this year by the panel that will outline threats of warming.

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