The summit will feature a large number of high-level meetings, press conferences, and negotiation sessions, featuring more than 100 heads of state and government and more than 45,000 participants overall. Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates, which is the host country for the events. The host nation gets the honor of naming a president for the COP talks, and the person so named for this year is Sultan al-Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and the UAE's Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology. He is also the founding CEO of Masdar, the UAE's renewable energy vehicle.

Some critics have questioned Jaber's ability to be a neutral guider of discussions and events, given his ties to an oil-producing giant. However, he was one of a number of people who kept last year's talks from becoming stalled. In the end, the COP27 summit resulted in the creation of a "loss and damage fund" to which large countries would contribute and from which climate-disaster-torn countries could draw.

Climate officials have repeatedly warned that world temperatures are rising too quickly and, as a result, catastrophically. The nations that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 set a target of a 1.5°C rise by 2100. Current estimates are that that number will actually be 2.4°C or even 2.7°C by the end of the century.

Notable for their non-attendance will be China's leader, Xi Jinping, and America's President, Joe Biden. Both cited other pressing concerns and vowed to send high-powered representatives. Late word came that Vice-president Kamala Harris would lead the U.S. delegation. Other world leaders, including United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, will attend. The U.K.'s King Charles III will give the opening address on December 1.

Officially, the meeting was the Conference of Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The UNFCCC began in 1994 and now numbers 198 signatory countries. The first COP meeting took place in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. The next meeting will be in 2023 in the United Arab Emirates.