"The United Nations asked governments on Thursday to submit plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions as the building blocks of a deal due in Paris in December to limit global warming, after scientists said 2014 was the hottest year on record.

Governments have agreed an informal deadline of March 31 to submit plans as the basis of the U.N. deal to slow climate change, which nearly all climate scientists say is mainly due to rising emissions of man-made greenhouse gases.

Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said the meeting in Paris was a chance to get on track 'towards a deep de-carbonisation of the global economy, achieving climate neutrality in the second half of the century'."

Alister Doyle reports for Reuters January 22, 2015. [2]