Even as drought persists in parts of Kenya's arid north, intense rains are claiming lives in other parts of the country – flooding slums in the capital Nairobi, sweeping away hikers in the Rift Valley, and destroying crops.

Many Kenyans shake their heads in dismay at the increasingly extreme and volatile weather, which is costing money as well as lives in east Africa's economic powerhouse.

Hopes are fading that climate talks in Qatar late this year will make even modest progress towards getting a new globally binding climate deal signed by 2015, as preliminary negotiations in Germany this week have left much work to be done.

The fear is that if work plans and agendas are not set by the end of this year at the latest it could have a knock-on effect, holding up the entire effort to avert potentially devastating global warming.

China spurred a jump in global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to their highest ever recorded level in 2011, offsetting falls in the United States and Europe, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday.

CO2 emissions rose by 3.2 percent last year to 31.6 billion metric tons (34.83 billion tons), preliminary estimates from the Paris-based IEA showed.

China, the world's biggest emitter of CO2, made the largest contribution to the global rise, its emissions increasing by 9.3 percent, the body said, driven mainly by higher coal use.

Climate researchers said Thursday the planet could warm by more than 3.5 degrees Celsius, boosting the risk of drought, flood and rising seas. The UN's target is a 2 C limit on warming from pre-industrial levels for manageable climate change. In a report, scientists said Earth's average global temperature rise could exceed the dangerous 3.5 C warming they had flagged only six months ago.

A yearly review of countries' greenhouse gas emissions cut pledges under an extension to the global climate pact the Kyoto Protocol could be a way to raise climate ambitions, the European Union's lead climate negotiator said on Wednesday.

Negotiators from over 180 countries are meeting in Bonn, Germany, until Friday to work towards getting a new global climate pact signed by 2015 and to ensure ambitious emissions cuts are made after the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of this year.

Europe yesterday warned at climate talks in Bonn that efforts to forge a new global pact to avert environmental disaster were in danger of floundering, and some pointed fingers at China.

Nine days into talks meant to set the stage for a United Nations gathering in Qatar in December, where countries must adopt an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, negotiators complained that procedural bickering was quashing progress hopes.

A row over planning how to bind all emitters under a global climate pact from 2020 at U.N. climate talks in Germany is blocking negotiations to deepen nearer term emission cuts and raise cash to help poor countries cope with a warming planet, the EU said Tuesday.

Delegates have failed to start work on a new Durban Platform negotiation track after four days of talks in Bonn spent arguing over an agenda to organize work this year and appoint a chair to steer the process.