On Friday, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release its first assessment since 2001, in a document likely to have far-reaching political and economic repercussions.

"Concerns about climate change and public awareness of the subject are at an all-time high," noted Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC's chairman.

"At no time in the past has there been a greater global appetite for knowledge on any subject than there is today on the scientific facts underlying the reality of global climate change."

Christian Brodhag, representing the French hosts, said "the fight against climate change" had become cemented into national and European policy.

Brodhag said that the 2003 heatwave in France, which killed an estimated 15,000 people, mainly the elderly, had awoken his country to the danger. "This is why our fellow citizens no longer question climate change."

But one delegate said many representatives at the conference feared the draft report poorly reflected urgency about climate change, especially about damage to Earth's ice cover and polar caps.

New data released Monday showed that 30 reference glaciers monitored by the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service lost about 66 centimetres (two feet) in thickness on average in 2005, bringing the loss about 10.5 metres (34.6 feet) on average since 1980.

"The new data confirms the trend in accelerated loss during the past two and half decades," the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said.

Climbers for the environment group Greenpeace scaled the Eiffel Tower to hang a protest banner of a thermometer, representing the threat of global warming.

The report will be the fourth since the IPCC was launched.

The panel is highly regarded for its neutrality and caution, and it wields a big influence over government policies, corporate strategies and even individual decision-making.

In 2001, the IPCC declared that carbon pollution from burning oil, gas and coal had helped drive atmospheric levels of CO2 to their highest in 420,000 years.

CO2 is the principal "greenhouse gas," a term that applies to half a dozen gases that linger invisibly in the atmosphere, trapping the Sun's heat instead of letting solar radiation bounce back into space.

Over the previous 50 years, temperatures climbed by around 0.1 C (0.2 F) per decade and most of the warming could be blamed on human activity, the 2001 report said.

It predicted that by 2100, the global atmospheric temperature will have risen between 1.4 and 5.8 C (2.52-10.4 F) and sea levels by 0.09 to 0.88 metres (3.5-35 inches) compared to their 1990 level, depending on how much greenhouse gas is emitted.

Pachauri said climate science had leapt ahead since 2001, and the report would eliminate some important areas of uncertainty.

A flurry of studies has highlighted damage to the climate system, including shrinking glaciers and snow cover in high mountains, a retreat of the North Pole's sea ice in summer and acidification of the seas caused by absorption of atmospheric CO2.

The draft report is agreed by consensus among the some 500 scientists and government representatives in the IPCC's Working Group 1.

Two other volumes will be issued in April in what will be the fourth assessment report on climate change by the IPCC since it was established in 1988. The two others will focus on the impacts of climate change and on the social-economic costs of reducing greenhouse gases.

The IPCC was set up by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and UNEP in 1988.

Since then, "a generation has already been born that has seen (climate) changes and extremes as part of their daily life," observed Jeremiah Lengoasa, the WHO's assistant secretary general.

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