|PIC1|A landmark agreement has been reached on climate change at a major conference in Brussels this week. Scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries continued to meet throughout the night to thrash out a deal.

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri said: "What we have is a very good document," according to the BBC.

The report, which will be released on Friday, is likely to explain the huge impact that climate change is already having throughout the world, including its impact on societies.

Richard Klein of the Stockholm Environment Institute said: "[The report] says quite clearly that climate change is happening and it is having effects on ecosystems and society, with particularly bad effects on developing countries. So it is quite a bleak message but it's now up to governments to act on what we told them."

The report, which is the second in a series of IPCC reports coming out this year, could be potentially vital, as it will be sent to world leaders in time for the G8 summit in June.

The first report told in February that it was 90 per cent likely that global warming experienced since 1950 was due to human activities across the globe.

The third in the series of the reports will be released in May and will advise on ways to reduce the increasing rise of greenhouse gases, and the fourth will summarise the findings in November.