The UN panel on climate change says claims UK scientists manipulated global warming data to boost the argument it is man-made should be investigated.

The allegations emerged after e-mails written by members of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were posted on the internet.

Robert Watson, one of the government's chief scientific advisors, has called for all the raw data to be published.

Norfolk police are investigating whether computers were hacked.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading body for assessing climate change science.


Click to view image: 'Dr Rajendra Pachauri'

The organisation's chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri told BBC Radio 4's The Report programme the claims were serious and he wants them investigated.

"We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it," he said.

"We certainly don't want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail."

Landmark assessment

Last week, the IPCC defended its procedures in the wake of the row.

One of the leaked e-mails suggested CRU head Dr Phil Jones wanted certain papers excluded from the UN's next major assessment of climate science.

Dr Jones, who has stood aside from his job pending the results of an internal review, strenuously denies this was his intention and says other e-mails have been taken out of context.

The row broke out two weeks ago when hundreds of messages between scientists at the CRU and their peers around the world were put on the internet along with other documents.

Climate "sceptics" have claimed that the e-mails undermine the scientific case for climate change being caused by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions, dubbing the issue "ClimateGate".

Other academics prominent in developing the mainstream view of climate science maintain that the contents of the stolen documents make no difference to the picture outlined by IPCC in its landmark 2007 assessment.


Click to view image: 'The sky is falling'