OSLO - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. climate panel shared the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for work on global warming, and the award committee urged action "before climate change moves beyond man's control."

Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won "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 Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

They were chosen to share the $1.5 million prize from a field of 181 candidates.

"Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man's control," the citation said of rising temperatures that could bring more droughts, floods, rising seas.

"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," the committee said of Gore.

"The IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming," it said.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said he was overwhelmed.

"I can't believe it, overwhelmed, stunned," Pachauri told reporters and co-workers after receiving the news on the phone at his office in New Delhi.

"I feel privileged sharing it with someone as distinguished as him," he added, referring to Gore.

The IPCC groups 2,500 researchers from more than 130 nations and issued reports this year blaming human activities for climate changes ranging from more heat waves to floods. It was set up in 1988 by the United Nations to help guide governments.

Since leaving office in 2001 Gore has lectured extensively on the threat of global warming and last year starred in his own Oscar-winning documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" to warn of the dangers of climate change and urge action against it.

It was the second prize to a leading U.S. Democrat during the presidency of Republican George W. Bush.

The 2002 prize went to former President Jimmy Carter, which the chairman of the Nobel committee had called a "kick in the legs" to the U.S. administration over its preparations to invade Iraq.

But chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the prize to Gore was not meant as criticism of Bush. The peace prize is not criticism of anyone," Danbolt Mjoes said.

The Nobel prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.54 million) and will be handed out in Oslo on December 10.