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The Bush administration violated U.S. law by missing deadlines to produce a study on the impact of global warming, now as much as two years overdue, and must issue a summary by March, a judge in Oakland, Calif., ruled.

U.S. District Judge Saundra Armstrong said Tuesday the government "unlawfully withheld action" required under the Global Change Research Act of 1990 to update a research plan and scientific assessment of climate change.

The law says the research plan should be revised every three years and the assessment every four years. The last research plan was in 2003, and the last assessment was published in 2000, before President Bush took office. Greenpeace International and two other environmental groups sued in November seeking a court order to produce the reports.

"This administration has denied and suppressed the science of global warming at every turn," Brendan Cummings, an attorney arguing the case for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. "Today's ruling is a stern rebuke of the administration's head-in-the-sand approach."

Armstrong ordered the government to produce a summary of the revised research plan by March 1 and the assessment by May 31.

The administration will review the ruling before commenting, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The reports may be completed by the end of the year, government lawyers said in court filings.

Bush, citing economic reasons, in March 2001 rejected the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty among industrial nations requiring cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and other gases linked to global warming.

China surpassed the U.S. last year as the top producer of carbon dioxide, the pollutant linked to global warming, according to an estimate published in June by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, a research group for the Dutch government and international organizations.

The lawsuit stems from a 1990 law that directed the president to periodically issue reports that recommend climate change research and analyze the effects of climate change.

The Bush administration said in court filings that it determined "only recently that the initiation of a process to revise the research plan has become necessary and advisable."