The UN climate science panel has criticised a blogger who has published a draft version of its next report.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is preparing what is known as its Fifth Assessment Report for publication next year.
The work looks to draw together research to provide a statement on global warming and its future effects.
The drafting of the reports is open to reviewers but on the condition that no details are published.
In a statement, the IPCC says it "regrets this unauthorized posting which interferes with the process of assessment and review".
The draft posted online is of what's called Working Group 1 (WGI), the first stage of the next report.
This covers the physical aspects of climate science, including observations of temperature and computer models of possible scenarios for future warming.
The IPCC statement read: "The unauthorized and premature posting of the drafts of the WGI AR5, which are works in progress, may lead to confusion because the text will necessarily change in some respects once all the review comments have been addressed.
"It is regrettable that one out of many hundreds of reviewers broke the terms of the review."
The draft was posted by US climate sceptic Alec Rawls, who runs a blog called Stop Green Suicide.
It is reported that he highlighted one particular sentence in the draft - about the possible effect of cosmic rays on the climate - claiming it undermined the case that most recent warming has been driven by man-made greenhouse gases.
BBC News - IPCC critical of climate change report leak
Climate scientists, reacting to the leak, have condemned the "cherry picking" of this one point in a long report and have said that other sections reinforce the central argument about the cause of climate change.
In any event, the text faces several further stages of possible revision before publication late next year.
Only to be expected when there is a lot of funding at stake that you'd always skew your report to make sure that the funding continued.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is preparing what is known as its Fifth Assessment Report for publication next year.
The work looks to draw together research to provide a statement on global warming and its future effects.
The drafting of the reports is open to reviewers but on the condition that no details are published.
In a statement, the IPCC says it "regrets this unauthorized posting which interferes with the process of assessment and review".
The draft posted online is of what's called Working Group 1 (WGI), the first stage of the next report.
This covers the physical aspects of climate science, including observations of temperature and computer models of possible scenarios for future warming.
The IPCC statement read: "The unauthorized and premature posting of the drafts of the WGI AR5, which are works in progress, may lead to confusion because the text will necessarily change in some respects once all the review comments have been addressed.
"It is regrettable that one out of many hundreds of reviewers broke the terms of the review."
The draft was posted by US climate sceptic Alec Rawls, who runs a blog called Stop Green Suicide.
It is reported that he highlighted one particular sentence in the draft - about the possible effect of cosmic rays on the climate - claiming it undermined the case that most recent warming has been driven by man-made greenhouse gases.
BBC News - IPCC critical of climate change report leak
Climate scientists, reacting to the leak, have condemned the "cherry picking" of this one point in a long report and have said that other sections reinforce the central argument about the cause of climate change.
In any event, the text faces several further stages of possible revision before publication late next year.
Only to be expected when there is a lot of funding at stake that you'd always skew your report to make sure that the funding continued.
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