Extreme heat, rainfall, glacier loss impacted Asia in 2025: WMO report
Asia saw a number of extreme weather events, including flooding, extreme heat, drought and devastating rainfall, with the annual mean temperature in 2025 recorded at 0.96 °C ± 0.08 above the 1991–2020 long period average, the latest ‘State of Climate in Asia report 2025’, released by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) on June 17 has found. Overall, the assessment also found an increase in ocean heat content, which indirectly alters storm tracks. (Image sourced from UNDP) The latest assessment for Asia’s climate, found Japan, China and the Republic of Korea all recorded their hottest summers on record, while prolonged heatwaves affected Central Asia, parts of West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, meaning all 23 monitored glaciers in high-mountain Asia lost mass, driven by above-average temperatures and below-average winter snow, it found. “The annual mean surface air temperature over Asian land areas in 2025 ranked between the second and fourth warmest on record. The temperature anomaly for 2025 was 0.96 °C above the 1991–2020 climatological average and 1.90 °C above the 1961–1990 baseline. Temperatures were above …

