A chairman has been appointed to an independent review into the science published by the research unit at the centre of the "Climategate" row.

Lord Oxburgh is a former chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology.

"The shadow hanging over climate change and science more generally at present makes it a matter of urgency that we get on with this assessment," he said.

The Lord's appointment was made on the recommendation of the Royal Society.

This is the second independent review into the Climategate e-mail controversy and will scrutinise the published science of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

This is distinct from the panel chaired by Sir Muir Russell which will, amongst other things, examine e-mail exchanges leaked from the unit to determine whether there is evidence of suppression or manipulation of data at odds with acceptable scientific practice.

The e-mails issue came to light in November last year, when hundreds of messages between scientists at the CRU and their peers around the world were posted on the world wide web, along with other documents.