An investigation of how global warming could change the planet over the next century has won the world’s leading award for science writing.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by the journalist Mark Lynas, was named as this year’s winner of the £10,000 Royal Society Science Books Prize.

Mr Lynas’s book describes what science suggests could happen with each degree Celsius by which global temperatures could warm by 2100, to highlight the urgency of tackling climate change now.

He was a 6/1 outsider to win, and saw off strong competition from the two favourites, the geneticists Craig Venter and Steve Jones.

Dr Venter, who led the private effort to sequence the human genome, was shortlisted for his autobiography, A Life Decoded. Professor Jones, a previous winner, was shortlisted for Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise, which uses the marine organism to assess the past and future of the planet.

Professor Jonathan Ashmore, of University College, London, who chaired the judging panel, said: “Lynas gives us a compelling and gripping view of how climate change could affect our world. It presents a series of scientifically plausible, worst case scenarios without tipping into hysteria.

“Six degrees is not just a great read, written in an original way, but also provides a good overview of the latest science on this highly topical issue. This is a book that will stimulate debate and that will, Lynas hopes, move us to action in the hope that this is a disaster movie that never happens. Everyone should read this book.”

Past winners of the prestigious award have included Professor Stephen Hawking, Jared Diamond (twice), Bill Bryson and Stephen Jay Gould.

The Junior Prize for children’s books, also worth £10,000, was awarded to Rebecca Gilpin, Leonie Pratt and their illustrator Josephine Thompson, for Big Book of Science Things to Make and Do.

It was chosen from a shortlist of six by a judging panel of almost 1,200 children from more than 120 schools and youth groups in the UK. Children from Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon, Thailand and Malaysia also took part in the judging process.

This year’s awards were supported by the Beecroft Trust, but the Royal Society is still seeking a full sponsor for the awards, which were backed by the pharmaceutical company Aventis until 2006.

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