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Asia, the continent with the largest land mass and population, is currently warming nearly twice as fast as the global land and ocean average, with widespread and prolonged heat waves, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has analysed in its latest report.
The ‘State of the Climate in Asia 2024’ report released on June 23 highlighted how the current warming has fuelled more extreme weather in the form of droughts and floods, while wreaking a heavy toll on the region’s economies and societies.
The mean anomaly for 2024 in Asia was 1.04 degrees Celsius (°C) above the 1991-2020 average, with average temperature ranking as the warmest or second warmest year on record (after 2020), depending on the dataset (WMO used six datasets in its analysis — Berkeley Earth, ERA5, GISTEMP v4, HadCRUT.5.0.2.0, JRA-3Q and NOAAGlobalTemp v6).
The report found that the warming trend in 1991-2024 was almost double the warming trend during the 1961-1990 period, and the temperature increase over land has been larger than the temperature increases over the ocean.
While temperatures were warmer than average for almost the whole region, they were particularly above average over an area from western China to Japan, over the Indochina Peninsula, West Asia and central northern Siberia. For example, Japan had its warmest year on record, exceeding the previous record set in 2023.
Prolonged heat waves affected many parts of Asia in 2024. The report highlighted how several parts of India too experienced intense heat waves in 2024, leading to more than 450 deaths across the country.
Meanwhile, Myanmar set a new national temperature record of 48.2°C on April 28 at Chank, in the country’s central part. Prolonged heat waves affected East Asia from April to November. Monthly average temperature records were broken one after another in Japan (April, July and October), in the Republic of Korea (April, June, August and September) and in China (April, May, August, September and November).
Thailand too experienced an intense heat wave, particularly in the north-eastern region from April 27 until May 2, when the maximum temperature exceeded 5°C above the long-term average.
Asia, which is surrounded by oceans on three sides, saw its average sea surface temperatures increasing at a rate of 0.24°C per decade, which is double the global mean rate of 0.13°C per decade.
The rates of sea-level rise in the Indian and Pacific Ocean areas of the continent also exceeded the global average over January 1993-November 2024, heightening risks for low-lying coastal areas, said the report.
In 2024, most of Asia’s ocean area was affected by marine heat waves of strong, severe, or extreme intensity — the largest extent since records began in 1993. The northern Indian Ocean and in the ocean area adjacent to Japan, the Yellow and East China Seas were especially affected.
During August and September 2024, nearly 15 million square kilometres of the region’s ocean was impacted. This was one-tenth of the Earth’s entire ocean surface, about the same size as the Russian Federation and more than 1.5 times the area of China, the report said.
Meanwhile, the report found that 23 of 24 glaciers suffered mass loss last year, leading to an increase in hazards like glacial lake outburst floods and landslides and long-term risks for water security.
Reduced winter snowfall and extreme summer heat accelerated glacier mass loss in the central Himalayas and Tian Shan. Over the last several decades, most glaciers in this region have been retreating. Urumqi Glacier No.1, located in the eastern Tian Shan, recorded its most negative mass balance since measurements began in 1959.
“The High-Mountain Asia (HMA) region, centred on the Tibetan Plateau, contains the largest volume of ice outside the polar regions, with glaciers covering an area of approximately 100,000 square km,” it said.
From cyclones to heavy rainfall and landslides, Asia experienced some of the record-breaking extreme weather events in 2024.
Tropical Cyclone Yagi, which was the strongest storm of the year, caused widespread damage and casualties across Viet Nam, the Philippines, Lao PDR, Thailand, Myanmar, and China.
In India, major landslides occurred in northern Kerala in Wayanad on July 30 following extreme rainfall, exceeding 500 mm in the 48 hours prior to the event. The landslides led to over 350 deaths, according to the report.
In Central Asia (mainly Kazakhstan and southern Russia), severe snow melt and record-breaking rainfall led to the worst flooding in at least 70 years, forcing the evacuation of 118,000 people.
West Asia was also hit by heavy rainfall: in the United Arab Emirates, 259.5 mm of rain fell in 24 hours — one of the most extreme precipitation events since records began in 1949.
In late September, record-breaking rainfall in Nepal triggered severe floods, killing at least 246 people. Damages exceeded 12.85 billion Nepalese rupees (about US$ 94 million at current exchange rates).
In India in 2024, lightning claimed around 1,300 lives across various parts of the country. One particularly deadly lightning event killed 72 people on July 10 affecting the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Jharkhand.
By contrast, drought in China affected nearly 4.8 million people, damaged 335,200 hectares of crops, and led to estimated 2.89 billion Chinese yuan (CNY) in direct losses (more than US $400 million at current exchange rates).