Asia, home to more than half the world’s population, is heating up nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world, with surging temperatures intensifying extreme weather, threatening food security and fragile ecosystems, and inflicting billions in economic losses, according to a new United Nations report.
Advertisement
The State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report, released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) – a UN agency charged with monitoring the planet’s atmosphere and climate – that last year was either the hottest or second-hottest ever recorded in Asia, depending on the data set.
On average, temperatures in Asia rose 1.04 degrees Celsius (1.87 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1991–2020 baseline, driving heatwaves and weather disasters from the Himalayas to the Pacific coast.
The report reveals that between 1991 and 2024, the continent’s warming trend was nearly double that of the 1961–1990 period – a result of Asia’s vast land mass, which heats more quickly than the world’s oceans. Spanning from the equator to the Arctic, the continent is acutely at risk from pronounced land-based warming.
Meanwhile, the planet’s three principal greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – reached unprecedented highs in 2023, the latest year with consolidated data.
“Extreme weather is already exacting an unacceptably high toll,” said WMO Secretary General Celeste Saulo, adding that the ability to forecast increasingly erratic weather was becoming more important than ever to save lives and livelihoods.