OSLO,: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Al Gore, the former American vice president, and to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work to alert the world to the threat of global warming.

Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, "is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," the Nobel citation said.

The United Nations committee, a network of 2,000 scientists, has produced two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming," the citation said.