Asia Is Warming Nearly Twice as Fast as the Global Average, Driving More Extreme Weather
London-UK, November 12, 2025
Critical weather conditions pressures the Asian continent to warn of the consequences of climate change.
A new, alarming report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that the continent of Asia is warming at a rate nearly twice the global average, accelerating an already profound crisis and driving a catastrophic surge in extreme weather events across the region.
The continent’s rapid thermal acceleration—caused by a combination of massive population density, heavy industrialisation, and specific geographical factors—is leading to intensified heatwaves, devastating monsoons, and rapid glacial melt across the Himalayan region.
This disproportionate rate of heating means that the population of 4.7 billion people across Asia is facing the most severe and immediate climate risks globally, requiring urgent, region-specific adaptation and mitigation strategies that go far beyond current international commitments.
Key Headlines
Disproportionate Rate:
Asia’s average temperature rise over the past decade is at least 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels, significantly higher than the global average of approximately 1.2°C.
Impact Drivers:
This rapid warming is supercharging deadly heatwaves in South Asia, creating heavier, more erratic rainfall during the monsoon season, and accelerating glacial melt in the Third Pole (the Himalayas).
Economic Threat:
The high concentration of low-lying coastal mega-cities, such as Shanghai, Mumbai, and Jakarta, places huge economic and human capital at risk from accelerating sea-level rise and storm surges.
Food Security:
The extreme weather patterns are causing crop failures and disrupting traditional agricultural cycles, posing a major threat to food and water security for billions of people across the region.
The WMO’s “State of the Climate in Asia 2025” report used decades of meteorological data to confirm the continent’s extreme vulnerability.
While the global community strives to limit warming to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target, large parts of Asia are already experiencing temperatures far beyond that threshold.
This increased regional warming is directly attributable to the specific geography and socio-economic dynamics of the continent. The huge landmass, combined with high levels of particulate matter (aerosols) from industrial activity, tends to amplify heat absorption in complex ways.
The immediate humanitarian cost of this accelerated warming is immense. In South Asia, the intensity and duration of spring and summer heatwaves have reached dangerous new extremes, with temperatures consistently pushing the limits of human survivability.
These heat events place extreme strain on health infrastructure and lead to hundreds of thousands of heat-related illnesses and deaths, particularly in regions with limited access to cooling or stable power.
Furthermore, the warming is fundamentally destabilising one of the world’s most critical climatic systems: the Asian Monsoon. The warmer air can hold significantly more moisture, which is then released as torrential, highly concentrated downpours.
This leads to both intense flooding in coastal and riverine areas—destroying infrastructure and displacing millions—and, paradoxically, extended periods of drought in other regions, as the rains become more erratic and unreliable.
The warming of Asia also poses a critical risk to global water supplies through its impact on the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, and the Hindu Kush, often called the “Third Pole.”
This region holds the largest store of frozen water outside the Arctic and Antarctic. The accelerated warming is causing glaciers to melt at unprecedented speeds, initially increasing water flow to major rivers like the Ganges, Yangtze, and Mekong, but ultimately threatening to deplete the region’s long-term freshwater reserves. These rivers sustain approximately a quarter of the world’s population, making the melt a critical global security concern.
In addition to water security, the threat of sea-level rise is heavily concentrated in Asia. The continent hosts 9 out of 10 countries with the largest populations exposed to coastal inundation.
Mega-cities and massive agricultural deltas are sinking due to groundwater extraction while simultaneously facing a rising ocean, a compounded threat that poses an existential risk to the region’s economic engines and cultural heritage.
The WMO report acts as a clear call to action, demanding that Asian nations and the international community move beyond reactive disaster response to implement large-scale, climate-resilient development that can shield billions of people from the escalating consequences of being the fastest-warming continent on Earth.
