Asia is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world, and deadly heat waves, floods, and droughts killed hundreds of people there in 2024, according to UN News. A new World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report shows the continent’s warming rate beats global averages by a lot. Lives and livelihoods across the region are getting hit hard, and no Asian country can escape these impacts, which aren’t slowing down.
Why does Asia warm faster than other regions? Its huge landmass is the main reason – land temperatures rise much quicker than ocean temperatures. But the oceans around Asia are getting hotter too. Surface temperatures in the Indian and Pacific Oceans hit record levels in 2024. Long heat waves on land and sea have melted glaciers and pushed sea levels higher across the region.
Some Asian countries got pounded by record rainfall that turned deadly. Northern Kerala in India saw a fatal landslide that killed over 350 people. Record rainfall mixed with snow melt in Kazakhstan led to the worst flooding in 70 years. But other places faced the opposite problem – not enough rain. A summer drought in China hit over 4.76 million people and damaged hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops.
The WMO report highlighted Nepal as an example of good preparation. Between September 26-28, 2024, Nepal got hit with extreme rainfall that created landslides and flooding across much of the country, killing 246 people and injuring 178. But early flood warning systems helped communities prepare for evacuation and let crisis responders reach the worst-hit areas quickly.
“This is the first time in 65 years that the flooding was this bad. We had zero casualties thanks to preparedness and rescue measures,” said Ramesh Karki, mayor of an affected municipality in eastern Nepal.
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said extreme weather is already taking an unacceptably high toll and stressed that comprehensive early warning systems coupled with capacity building are the only way to help communities adapt to these increasingly extreme weather patterns.
