From December 2024 to February 2025, Philippine capital Manila and Indonesia’s largest metropolis Jakarta experienced ‘unusual’ heat that could be strongly attributed to climate change for nearly 70 days across the 90-day period, found a study by scientists from the United States-based nonprofit Climate Central. The two Southeast Asian cities, alongside five other Asian megacities, dominated a list of 11 cities which saw such persistent warming.
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South Indian state Tamil Nadu came after Nigeria’s Lagos as an Asian megacity most impacted by climate-induced heat in the three-month period, experiencing 81 days of warm temperature. Three other Indian cities – Maharashtra, Telangana and Karnataka – also made the list.
Climate Central, which conducts these quarterly studies in seasons when people globally felt a strong climate change influence, analysed 38 megacities with populations over 10 million for its latest report. It said that cities are hotspots of heat risk due to their high population density and land development patterns.
The world’s megacities with temperatures at CSI 2 or higher for at least 30 days during the season analysed (1 December 2024 to 28 February 2025). Image: Climate Central
The results come after the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record, in a 175-year observational period, with global surface temperature at 1.55°C above pre-industrial average – crossing 1.5°C for the first time. Each of the past 10 years – from 2015 to 2024 – were also individually the 10 hottest years on record.
WMO described it as “an extraordinary streak of record-breaking temperatures” experienced globally.
In recent years, Climate Central’s quarterly study has also consistently found that across Asia, Southeast Asian countries were disproportionately impacted by climate change-induced heat.
In its latest analysis, where scientists found at least one in five people feeling a strong climate change influence every day in the same three-month period from December 2024 globally, in Asia, Brunei Darussalam experienced the longest period of such unusual warming, as it endured heat for 83 days.
The scientists consider heat to be “unusual” if it is strongly influenced by climate change and detected for 30 days or more based on data recorded by an in-house tool that indicates how global warming has altered the frequency of daily temperatures in any location around the world.
After Brunei, the Philippines is the second most heat-impacted country in Southeast Asia, as its population of almost 117 million went through 74 days of extreme warming in the same period.
Indonesia, the most populous country in the bloc, and Timor-Leste followed closely as they suffered sweltering weather for 72 days.
Malaysia, Singapore, and Myanmar were also recorded to have experienced severe daily average temperatures that were influenced by climate change.
Elsewhere in the world, it was the Carribean Islands and Sub-Saharan African countries like Rwanda and Liberia that bore the brunt of unusual heat globally.
Southeast Asian countries dominate the most heat-impacted countries in Asia from December 2024 to February 2025. Image: Climate Central
The Climate Shift Index (CSI) tool above quantifies the local influence of climate change on a country’s daily temperatures. The higher the level, the greater the influence of climate change detected. The tool considers heat in a country to be unusual if it has a recording of CSI 2 or higher. Image: Climate CentralIn a previous Climate Central report that analysed the months of June to August 2024, Southeast Asian countries likewise dominated a list of countries in Asia that experienced the most unusual heat Brunei came in second to Maldives in terms of number of days of severe warming. Sri Lanka and Yemen took the succeeding spots in the ranking, as these countries went through 76 and 73 hot days respectively.
The rest of the countries in the list were Indonesia and Malaysia which suffered 72 days of extreme heat, followed by the Philippines and Singapore which had 71. Climate Central did not have data for the months of September to November 2024.
In last year’s Climate Central report, Indonesia topped the list of countries worldwide with the most unusual heat from December 2023 to February 2024, followed by Malaysia, Sub-Saharan African countries Rwanda and Burundi, then the Philippines.
“Climate change is not a distant threat but a present reality to millions,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president of science at Climate Central. “The increasing frequency and severity of heat events around the world reveal a dangerous pattern of heat exposure that will only worsen if the burning of fossil fuel continues.”
