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OSLO, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. climate panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for raising awareness of the threat of global warming.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to share the 2007 prize from a field of 181 candidates.

"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," the committee said in its award citation.

"The IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming," it said.

The IPCC groups 2,500 researchers from more than 130 nations and issued reports this year blaming human activities for climate changes ranging from more heat waves to floods. It was set up in 1988 by the United Nations to help guide governments.

Since leaving office in 2001 Gore has lectured extensively on the threat of global warming and last year starred in his own Oscar-winning documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" to warn of the dangers of climate change and urge action against it.

The Nobel prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.54 million) and will be handed out in Oslo on December 10.

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