After two weeks of intense negotiations, United Nations climate talks in Poland looked set to clinch a much-awaited deal meant to drive greater efforts to limit the threat from increasingly extreme weather.

Exhausted negotiators from nearly 200 nations were expected to agree to the deal early today, Singapore time, after the meeting in the city of Katowice went more than 24 hours beyond a Friday deadline.

Delegates at the talks, called COP24, were tasked with completing a complex rule book that would allow the 2015 Paris climate agreement to go into action in 2020.

The UN and many poorer, vulnerable nations appealed for a strong rule book that would boost efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, saying ever more severe weather and rising sea levels were pushing their economies to the brink.

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