Warming twice as fast, Asia faces a looming environmental catastrophe

The latest UN report on global warming and climate change contains bad news for Asia - apparently, this vast continent is experiencing warming at nearly double the global rate, thereby raising the possibility of devastating consequences for the continent's 4.6 billion in-habitants.

Such an anomalous rise is to be expected, considering that Asia has two countries with the world's biggest populations, India and China, not to mention other nations like Bangladesh and Indonesia with huge populations of their own. It is no wonder that the World Meteorological Organization's 'State of the Climate in Asia 2024' report coincides with record-breaking concentrations of the world's three primary greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide -reaching unprecedented levels in 2023.

It is obvious that bigger populations emit larger carbon footprints and more greenhouse gases, exacerbated by the fact that major industrial nations in the continent continue to use fossil fuels as the primary source of energy and the use of greener sustainable power sources is yet to catch up.

Asia's warming rate nearly doubled between 1991 and 2024 compared to the 1961-90 period, and this acceleration occurred because landmasses heat up more rapidly than the oceans.

The deleterious out-come has been that in recent years unprecedented record-breaking heatwaves swept across Japan, South Korea, China, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East while triggering numerous natural disasters.

One of these, Typhoon Yagi, which swept over Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and China, claimed over 1,000 lives; heavy rainfall and landslides in Kerala killed more than 350 people; record-breaking rainfall in Nepal resulted in 246 deaths; the UAE experienced its heaviest rainfall since records began in 1949, with similar conditions affecting Bahrain, Oman, and Iran.

More devastating than such short-term damages are the long-term depredations - sea levels along Asia's Pacific and Indian Ocean coasts, are rising faster than the global average, placing low-lying coastal communities at increased risk, while rising sea levels are altering ocean currents and marine ecosystems, potentially changing storm patterns, increasing ocean stratification, and harming marine life.

Asia's mountainous regions are also facing unprecedented challenges as reduced snowfall and intensifying heatwaves cause glaciers in the central Himalayas and Central Asia's Tian Shan region to shrink rapidly. Of 24 glaciers that scientists have been monitoring, 23 lost ice mass in 2024, causing glacial lake outbursts and large-scale flooding.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, every 0.5-degree Celsius increase in global warming will significantly amplify the frequency and intensity of extreme heat, heavy rainfall events, and regional droughts. Given that, in contrast with the Paris Summit goal of keeping the global temperature rise at below 1.5% of the pre-industrial level, Asia's temperature rise has outpaced that target, climate-related apocalypse is not too far away without many rectifying steps being taken!