Scientists from around the world are today meeting at a climate change summit to discuss the long-term implications of the increase in greenhouse gases.
Over the next three days, participants will discuss the scientific implications of climate change.
Discussion papers include the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and sea level rise; the role of tropical forests; problems caused by rapid climate change; critical levels of greenhouse gases; stabilisation scenarios and the implications for global decisions.
When prime minister Tony Blair announced the conference last September, he said it would address "big questions" such as what quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was deemed excessive, and what options exist to avoid such levels.
Environment secretary Margaret Beckett, who is attending the conference at the climate change research centre at the new Met Office complex, today acknowledged that the UK was not on track to meet its own targets on cutting carbon dioxide emissions, but that the less stringent targets set out in the international Kyoto agreement on climate change had already been exceeded.
"One of the most important lessons Britain can spread to the rest of the world, and one of the reasons why we do bang the drum about this, is because we have been able to show that we can cut our emissions of greenhouse gases substantially and yet grow our economy," she said.
"That is the most important thing, particularly for the poorest countries in the world. We can show you can grow your economy and cut your emissions."
The Exeter-based conference comes at a midway point between the intergovernmental panel on climate change's third assessment report, published in 2001, and its fourth report, anticipated in 2007.
The IPCC concluded in 2001 that there "is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities".
Vicky Pope, head of the Met Office's climate prediction programmme, said emissions had been produced since the industrial revolution but that technology had only recently been able to reveal what has happened over the last century, and predict what might happen in the future.
"Even the most conservative predictions will give us substantial climate changes by the end of the century," she said.