In the United States, the world's biggest polluter, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the report confirmed what President George W. Bush had said about "the nature of climate change, and it reaffirms the need for continued US leadership in addressing global climate issues."

Ban said the report "highlights the scientific consensus regarding the quickening and threatening pace of human-induced climate change."

"The global response therefore needs to move much more rapidly as well, and with more determination," the UN secretary general said in a statement.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the UN's top scientific authority on global warming -- delivered its starkest warning yet at a conference in Paris.

The UN body's report, its first for six years, said fossil fuel pollution would raise temperatures this century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes, melt polar ice and damage the climate system for a thousand years to come.

South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk urged Bush to hear the "growing groundswell of opinion in that country (United States)" and to join the global effort to curb global warming.

Bodman said the US government under Bush "is taking action to curb the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and encouraging the development and deployment of clean energy technologies here in the United States and across the globe."