Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, congratulated Gore and the IPCC and said the prize would help to continue the globally growing awareness of climate change.
"Their contributions to the prevention of climate change have raised awareness all over the world. Their work has been an inspiration for politicians and citizens alike," he said in a statement. "The European Union remains committed to its ambitious goals in the field. I call on all our partners to take this Nobel Peace Prize as an encouragement to approach this challenge even more swiftly, and decisively."
In recent years, the Norwegian committee has broadened its interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts outlined by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in creating the prize with his 1895 will. The prize now often also recognizes human rights, democracy, elimination of poverty, sharing resources and the environment.
Two of the past three prizes have been untraditional, with the 2004 award to Kenya environmentalist Wangari Maathai and last year's award to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank.
The prizes include a gold medal, a diploma and a 10 million Swedish kronor (US$1.5 million; Ｕ1.1 million) cash prize.
On Thursday, Doris Lessing, author of dozens of works from short stories to science fiction, including the classic "The Golden Notebook," won the Nobel Prize for literature.
On Wednesday, Gerhard Ertl of Germany won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces. On Tuesday, France's Albert Fert and German Peter Gruenberg won the physics award for discovering a phenomenon that lets computers and digital music players store reams of data on ever-shrinking hard disks.
Americans Mario R. Capecchi and Oliver Smithies, and Briton Sir Martin J. Evans, won the medicine prize Monday for groundbreaking discoveries that led to a powerful technique for manipulating mouse genes.
The prize for economics will be announced Monday.
