Asia is warming faster than global average, making regional cooperation vital

By Meena Menon

The year 2025 sends an ominous warning for the future for Asia. The continent experienced intense heat, drought, retreating glaciers, high ocean temperatures and marine heatwaves, underscoring the imperative for early warning and coordinated action during extreme weather events, according to a new report  by the World Meteorological Organization.

Asia has warmed faster than the global average in recent decades, with the warming trend between 1991 and 2025 approximately twice that observed between 1961 and 1990, the State of the Climate in Asia 2025 said.

In addition, South Asia has been inordinately affected by sea-level rise, ocean acidification and flooding, it said.

The report was launched on June 17, 2026, at Paro in Bhutan. It has been produced in collaboration with National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, international data centres, leading climate research institutions and United Nations partners. Its co-lead authors are Sreejith Op of the India Meteorological Department and Peiqun Zhang of the China Meteorological Administration.

The report analysed temperatures, rainfall, extreme events, glaciers, oceans and seas and interventions in the case of disasters. The report noted that much of Asia experienced temperature anomalies. But cooler-than-average conditions prevailed over South Asia, including the Indian subcontinent.

It warned that water security could be impacted severely as all 23 monitored glaciers in high-mountain Asia lost mass, as a result of above-average temperatures and below-average winter snow. This threatens long-term water security in the world’s most heavily populated region and could lead to an upsurge in hazards. For instance, several glacial lake outburst floods and glacier collapses were recorded in 2025.

“Asia is impacted by rising temperatures, warming ocean waters, higher sea levels and retreating glaciers,” said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo in a statement. “Heavy rainfall, flooding and drought have a heavy economic and human cost, while extreme heat, dust storms and glacial flooding are becoming major hazards

With regard to rainfall, the report points out that most of southern Asia received above-average rainfall, with the Indian monsoon delivering exceptionally heavy rainfall. In contrast, the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta and the Irrawaddy River catchment were drier than average, as were the Sulaiman Mountains and the Hindu Kush.

However, the southern part of China was a notable exception, experiencing drier-than-average conditions and extreme dryness in some locations.

A chief concern in the region is ocean warming, which contributes to sea-level rise and alters ocean currents. Ocean heat content in the Asia region has increased since the 1990s, and a new record was set in 2025 relative to the entire time series from 1960 to the present, the report said.

Record subsurface ocean warming was concentrated in the south-eastern Arabian Sea, the southern Bay of Bengal, south of Sri Lanka extending into the central equatorial Indian Ocean, and parts of the North Pacific Ocean, north of the Kuroshio current.

Sea level rises in response to ocean warming and the melting of glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, had grave impacts on coastal communities and low-lying island nations. The report found that sea level in the region in 2025 reached its highest level since records began in 1999. Over the period 1999-2025, the sea level in almost all coastal regions of the northern Indian Ocean rose significantly faster than the global mean (3.6 mm/year).

With regard to the Indian subcontinent, the rate of sea-level rise along the coasts (averaged from the coast to 50 km offshore) amounted to 4.9 mm per year over this period, though this is less than the dramatic rise of 6 mm/year in the Kuroshio current region.

Increasing carbon dioxide uptake in oceans has led to acidification and it poses significant risks to marine ecosystems, critical habitats and biodiversity along with ocean warming and ocean deoxygenation.

Equally impactful are the North Indian Ocean marine heatwaves, which are prolonged periods of extreme heat that affect the ocean and have wide-ranging consequences for marine organisms and the ecosystem. The report stated that almost the entire ocean area of Asia was affected by marine heatwaves of strong, severe or extreme intensity in 2025, particularly in the northern Indian Ocean and in the waters adjacent to Japan, in the Yellow Sea and in the East China Sea.

During the months of July, August and September, over 10 million sq km of the region’s ocean was impacted by marine heat waves.

Unlike 2026, the report said the Asian monsoon system showed an early and active progression in 2025, with the south-west monsoon reaching the Andaman Sea by mid-May, indicating an early onset phase. The monsoon advanced rapidly and covered the entire Indian region by June 29, 2025, about one week earlier than the normal onset date of around July 8.

However, the monsoon in South Asia caused severe floods in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh and a large number of deaths including 142 in June in India, caused by lightning. Pakistan experienced severe impacts, with 1,037 flood-related deaths, a majority during flash floods in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province where over 229 000 houses were damaged or destroyed, displacing over three million people.

Severe flash flooding repeatedly affected northern India and Nepal and flooding in Bangladesh in late May and early June affected refugee camps.

In terms of extreme events, in 2025, there were four cyclones in the north Indian Ocean: Ditwah, Montha, Senyar and Shakthi. While all were of relatively low intensity, Ditwah had a devastating impact in November along Sri Lanka’s east coast, killing 640 people and wrecking over 114 000 houses.

The report also discussed the intervention and coordination among countries and agencies in calamities and found that in Sri Lanka, early evacuation of more than 61,000 people to safe locations ahead of landfall, helped limit wind-related casualties. What worked in favour of disaster mitigation was national and district coordination between technical agencies and the Disaster Management Centre.

However ,on the flip side, there were communication gaps and delayed action despite early warning. The emergency information was not made available simultaneously in all three of Sri Lanka’s national languages – Sinhala, Tamil and English. The Tamil-language warnings arrived later.

Although the first warning on Ditwah was issued in early November, the response from the relevant officials at all levels was reactive, rather than proactive, the report concluded.

The report recommended some steps in case of such extreme events and suggested that there should be 24 hours of warning lead time and to ensure better coordination across all the agencies. Importantly, Ditwah highlighted the limitations of wind-intensity-based forecasting. Although Ditwah was classified as a “cyclonic storm”, with winds of approximately 65 km/h, it caused catastrophic impacts due to prolonged rainfall, among other reasons. This underlines the need for impact-based forecasting and assessment of cascading impacts.

–Meena Menon, PhD, University of Leeds, is an independent journalist, researcher and author and this article was originally featured on scroll.in