South Korea's Hoesung Lee to Lead United Nations Panel of Climate Scientists

Oslo, Norway: Governments picked South Korea's Hoesung Lee on Tuesday to head the UN panel of climate scientists, which guides policies for combating global warming and won a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Lee, a professor of the economics of climate change, will succeed India's Rajendra Pachauri as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the IPCC said after a vote at a meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Lee, 69, beat five rivals for the job, including Belgian scientist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele in a run-off vote, and will be chair for 6-8 years to oversee a mammoth report on the risks of climate change.

The last series of IPCC reports in 2013-14 raised the probability that human activities, led by the burning of fossil fuels, have caused at least 95 percent of warming since 1950.

Lee, until now a vice-chair of the IPCC, will be the U.N.'s top climate scientist when almost 200 nations meet in Paris in from November 30 to December 11, seeking to agree a new global deal to slow climate change.

Pachauri, who had been due to stand down at the meeting in Croatia after 13 years, quit early in February after a female researcher accused him of sexual harassment, a charge he denies.

The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with climate campaigner and former US Vice President Al Gore.