Armed with great domestic achievements in combating climate warming, US President Joe Biden will arrive at the COP27 Conference in Egypt on Friday, but he is under pressure to do more towards countries afflicted by natural disasters.

Biden is spending a few hours at the conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, three days after the US midterm elections, which raised questions about the implications of their outcome for US climate policy.

The US President's climate plans were greatly enhanced this year when Congress passed legislation to invest $369 billion in clean energy in the United States.

"We live in a critical decade during which we have the opportunity to prove ourselves and move forward in the fight for global climate," Biden wrote in a tweet.

"Let's make this a station where we respond to the call," the US president added. The US president was absent from the summit of heads of state and government at the weekend, to coincide with the US elections.

New research has shown the extreme difficulty of achieving the goal of limiting climate warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, which requires cutting emissions by nearly half by 2030.

The study, whose results were published Friday in the journal "Earth System Science Data", concluded that carbon dioxide emissions are on the way to rise by 1% in 2022, to reach a record level.

The negotiations at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference are dominated by the need to stop the procrastination of rich countries in helping developing countries to make their economies more environmentally friendly and to compensate for the losses and damages they incur due to disasters caused by climate change.

"The world needs the United Nations to be a climate leader in our fight for climate justice," Ugandan activist Vanessa Namkateh, 25, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, told AFP.

German climate envoy Jennifer Morgen said Biden's attendance at COP27 was an "excellent gesture."

"I think that this reassures countries and people that the United States is taking this issue very seriously and at the highest levels, and we need that," she told reporters.

- Republican skepticism -

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden would "emphasize the need to do more, and more quickly, to help the most vulnerable communities build resilience" and push major economies to "radically" cut their emissions.

US Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry presented a public-private partnership aimed at supporting the transition to renewable energy sources in developing countries based on a carbon credit system, but activists criticized this program.

Kerry stressed that "no government in the world has the money to do what we must do to win this battle," noting that the total needs may reach four trillion.

With the Republicans expected to take control of the House of Representatives again, part of Biden's climate plan may be affected by this. The Democrats have a chance to retain a majority in the Senate.

Biden pledged to contribute $11.4 billion to an annual mechanism to provide $100 billion from rich nations to developing nations to transition to renewable energy sources and strengthen their resilience to climate change.

However, Democrats must quickly pass this amount in Congress before the Republicans, conservative on climate issues, take control of the House of Representatives.

"We will do everything we can to get this legislation passed. We hope that the Republicans in Congress will not block that," Representative Kathy Castor, who chairs the US House of Representatives climate crisis committee, told AFP.

- Losses and damages -

For years, the United States has resisted trying to set up a "loss and damage" mechanism in which rich nations would compensate developing nations for damage caused by natural disasters caused by climate change.

The emerging countries succeeded in including this issue officially on the agenda of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference.

Biden will use his visit to meet with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to raise the issue of human rights.

On Thursday evening, Washington expressed its "deep concern" about the situation of the country's most prominent prisoner of conscience, Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who is on hunger strike. His file was addressed by leaders of other countries this week in COP27.

After COP27, Biden will go to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Cambodia over the weekend, and from there to Indonesia to participate in the G20 summit.

Biden also has a chance to revive cooperation with China when he meets his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit next week. Another US official said he would seek to discuss "how to advance our joint action on climate change."

Beijing suspended climate negotiations with Washington after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.

Cooperation between the world's two most polluting countries is vital in international efforts to limit climate warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, an increasingly difficult goal to achieve.