followers on Twitter from Parliament this morning

Six months ago, the then-unknown Miss Thunberg camped outside Sweden's parliament next to a hand-written sign that read 'Skolstrejk för Klimatet' (School strike for the climate).

She skipped school every Friday to sit on the steps of the Riksdag and soon became a global success following her first TED talk - which now has more than a million views.

The 16-year-old climate crusader has already been immersed in her specialist subject for seven years.

Last year Miss Thunberg described herself as having been 'diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, OCD and selective mutism, saying 'I only speak when I have something important to say'.

She added: 'I see the world a bit differently, from another perspective… I can do the same thing for hours.'

She comes from an eminentfamily. Her mother is the beautiful blonde Swedish opera singer Malena Ernman who was the country's entry in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest.

Her father is actor Svante Thunberg, who was named after a distant relative, Svante Arrhenius, a Nobel-prize-winning scientist who in 1896 first calculated the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg attend a session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

Greta's mother is Swedish opera singer Malena Ernman. She is seen performing during the Eurovision grand final in Moscow on May 16

Miss Thunberg explained that she first learned about climate change in school, aged nine.

'They were always talking about how we should turn off lights, save water, not throw out food,' she said in one interview.

But she was baffled and frustrated by