ISLAMABAD: Asia is currently warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, fueling more extreme weather and wreaking a heavy toll on the region’s economies, ecosystems, and societies, according to a report published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on the ‘State of the Climate in Asia 2024’ published on Monday.
The State of the Climate reports, which provide policy-relevant information for national and regional decision-making, have previously reported in 2024 that the impact of heatwaves in Asia was becoming more severe, with melting glaciers threatening the region’s future water security.
The new report says that 2024 was the warmest or second-warmest year on record, depending on the dataset, with widespread and prolonged heat waves. The warming trend between 1991 and 2024 was almost double that of the 1961–1990 period.
Asia is the continent with the largest land mass, extending to the Arctic, and is warming more than twice as fast as the global average because the temperature increase over land is larger than the temperature increase over the ocean.
In 2024, heatwaves gripped a record area of the ocean. Sea surface temperatures were the highest on record, with Asia’s sea surface warming rate at 0.24°C per decade—nearly double the global average. Sea level rise on the Pacific and Indian Ocean sides of the continent exceeded the global average, heightening risks for low-lying coastal areas.
In 2024, most of the ocean area of Asia was affected by marine heatwaves of strong, severe, or extreme intensity—the largest extent since records began in 1993. The northern Indian Ocean and the ocean area adjacent to Japan, the Yellow and East China seas, were especially affected.
