Barack Obama will trek through the wilderness in Alaska this week with TV adventurer Bear Grylls, the NBC channel has announced.

The president is due to tape an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls to observe the effects of climate change on the area, the channel said.

Barack Obama is the first president to appear on Bear Grylls’ show, to be aired later this year.

The president is on a three-day tour of Alaska aimed at highlighting the pace of climate change.

Photo NBC

It is part of his administration’s efforts to build support for new legislation significantly capping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in the US, as well as raise attention to the ways climate change has damaged Alaska’s natural landscape.

Barack Obama follows several other high profile figures, including actresses Kate Winslet and Kate Hudson, who have tested their survival skills on the show.

Bear Grylls – a former British special forces soldier – puts celebrities through their paces in remote forests and mountains across the world, “pushing their minds and bodies to the limit to complete their journeys”.

This week Barack Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit the Alaskan Arctic, where he is due to address foreign ministers from Arctic nations at a conference on climate change.

Barack Obama is also scheduled to visit glaciers and meet fishermen and native leaders to discuss rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers and melting permafrost in Alaska.

Before he departed for Alaska, Barack Obama announced he was changing the name of Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America, to its original native Alaskan, Denali.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama unveiled plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions from US power stations by nearly a third within 15 years.