A deal aimed at staving off dangerous climate change has been struck at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

Countries have agreed a deal on the climate crisis that its backers say will keep within reach the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C, the key threshold of safety set out in the 2015 Paris agreement.

The Glasgow Climate Pact is the first ever climate deal to explicitly plan to reduce coal, the worst fossil fuel for greenhouse gases.

The deal also presses for more urgent emission cuts and promises more money for developing countries - to help them adapt to climate impacts.

But the pledges don't go far enough to limit temperature rise to 1.5C.

A commitment to phase out coal that was included in earlier negotiation drafts led to a dramatic finish after India led opposition to it.

India's climate minister Bhupender Yadav asked how developing countries could promise to phase out coal and fossil fuel subsidies when they "have still to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication".

In the end countries agreed to "phase down" rather than "phase out" coal, amid expressions of disappointment by some. COP26 President Alok Sharma said he was "deeply sorry" for how events had unfolded.

But he said it was vital to protect the agreement as a whole.

As part of the agreement countries have pledged to meet next year to pledge further major carbon cuts so that the goal of 1.5C can be reached. Current pledges, if fulfilled, are only though to limit global warming to 2.4C.

If global temperatures rise by more than 1.5C, scientists say the Earth is likely to experience severe effects such as millions more people being exposed to extreme heat.

Developing nations were also unhappy about the lack of progress on what's known as "loss and damage", the idea that richer countries should compensate poorer ones for climate change effects they can't adapt to.