The prize was awarded "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change", the committee said.
Bill Clinton’s former vice president helped put global warming at the top of the international agenda with his 2006 film "An Inconvenient Truth", which won an Oscar for best documentary.
Environmentalists welcomed the award. Saleemul Huq, head of the Climate Change Group at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development said: "The Nobel committee has rightly recognised that the scientific evidence shows overwhelmingly that human activities are changing our climate change in a way that threatens peace, security, the natural environment and future generations."
See full story