A review into a key global assessment of climate change prompted by the exposure of a high-profile mistake yesterday found the study's conclusions on the regional impacts of global warming were well-founded and did not contain significant errors.
The review of part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's key 2007 report was launched by the Dutch government after it emerged the study claimed 55 per cent of the country was below sea level - an inaccurate figure which had been supplied by the Dutch environmental assessment agency.
The review, by the Dutch environmental assessment agency, found the summary conclusions for the regional impacts of global warming contained a minor "inaccuracy" about the number of people in Africa who will be more at risk of a lack of water - a mistake the report's authors dispute.
But it said the error, and a lack of transparency as to where the conclusions had come from, did not undermine the findings that the negative impacts of climate change posed "substantial risks" to most parts of the world.
A series of other minor mistakes were found in the 500 page document which fed into the summary, but most of these were references or typographical errors, with just one "significant" error about the decline in anchovy fisheries in the African west coast which has been corrected.
The report also raised concerns that the report summary highlighted more of the negative effects of climate change than the positive - but the IPCC authors yesterday said they focused on the greatest impacts to human well-being and the environment when preparing the conclusions for governments.
Professor Martin Parry, co-chairman of one of the main areas of the IPCC's assessment, said the Dutch assessment showed the conclusions on regional impacts of climate change in the report were "safe, sound and reliable". But he said that the science of climate change was now "a battlefield" because some people saw the costs of taking action to tackle the problem of global warming as a threat.
And he admitted another high-profile mistake in the report which has prompted criticism of the IPCC - that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 - had done "huge damage" and it would take a long time "for the wounds to heal" from it.
He said his fellow authors of the fourth assessment study published in 2007 were dismayed such a mistake could have been included in the report.
The mistakes in the IPCC's study emerged as climate science was still reeling from the leak of 13 years of e-mails from a world-leading climate research centre at the University of East Anglia (UEA), which "sceptics" seized on as evidence scientists were trying to manipulate data to support a theory of man-made global warming.
The last of three inquiries into the "climategate" affair at UEA is due to reveal its findings tomorrow.
Prof. Parry said the Dutch reviewers had gone into the IPCC report with a fine-tooth comb and had delivered a strong endorsement of its conclusions.
He said he didn't see any need for another layer of the review process when the IPCC conducted its fifth assessment over the next two years.