<div><p>The UN climate panel is re-examining its claim that global warming is linked to worsening natural disasters after doubts were raised about the evidence, a British newspaper reported on Sunday.</p><p>The news brings fresh embarrassment to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which this week admitted errors in a forecast about melting Himalayan glaciers that was included in a landmark 2007 report.</p><p>That report -- which won the panel a Nobel Peace Prize and has become a benchmark in climate science -- also contained a claim that rapidly rising costs from events such as floods and hurricanes were linked to climate change.</p><p>According to The Sunday Times, however, the claim was based on an unpublished study that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny.</p><p>When the study was finally published in 2008, it included a caveat saying: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."</p><p>The IPCC included the claim despite doubts raised by at least two scientific reviewers at the time, and also failed to issue a clarification after the study was published, the Sunday Times said.</p><p>Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and the vice-chairman of the IPCC, told the newspaper that he would be reviewing the evidence.</p><p>"We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific," he said.</p><p>The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007, was a 938-page opus whose warning that climate change was on the march spurred politicians around the world to vow action.</p><p>However, it had to admit last week that a forecast suggesting the glaciers in the Himalayas were likely to disappear by 2035 was "poorly substantiated".</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=67699918&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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