By Sarah Knapton

Professor Chris Field, the author of a landmark report on climate change, claimed future temperatures "will be beyond anything" previously predicted.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago, he said greenhouse gases increased far more rapidly than expected between 2000 and 2007.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously in climate policy," he said.

Prof Field said his 2007 report, which predicted temperature rises between 1.98F (1.1C) and 11.52F (6.4C) over the next century, seriously underestimated the scale of the problem.

And he blamed the unexpected increases on the burgeoning economies of India and China which are burning massive amounts of coal for electric power.

The warming planet is likely to dry out tropical forests, making them susceptible to wildfires.

The rising temperatures could also speed up the melting of the permafrost, vastly increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, Prof Field warns.

"Without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought," he said.

Prof Field is the director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Professor of Environmental Earth System Science, at Stanford University.

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