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Expert Opinions & Stories
Adaptation is rapidly emerging as a critical pathway to safeguard communities and ecosystems from the impacts of climate variability which creates unpredictable challenges that are hard to plan for…
Drought is a slow-onset disaster that causes significant damage to the environment. Unlike most other natural hazards, the effects of drought often accumulate slowly over an extended period…
The Asia-Pacific Riskscape: How do the changes in weather, climate and water impact our lives?
On this World Meteorological Day, WMO and ESCAP unpack the 2023 theme: Weather, Climate and Water across Generations – through a series of three opinion pieces focused on the Asia-Pacific region,…
On this World Meteorological Day, WMO and ESCAP unpack the 2023 theme: Weather, Climate and Water across Generations – through a series of three opinion pieces focused on the Asia-Pacific region,…
Vanuatu twin cyclones underscore the Pacific’s vulnerability to compounding climate-disaster risks
Two destructive Category 4 tropical cyclones, Judy and Kevin, and an earthquake of 6.5 magnitude impacted over 80 per cent of the Vanuatu population from 1 to 3 March 2023. To address this emergency…
Floods are a recurring phenomenon in Bangladesh and the adjoining state of Assam, India. The ongoing large-scale flooding here is not an exception. Floods often trigger landslides and large-scale…
Reclaiming our future
The Asia-Pacific region is at a crossroads today – to further breakdown or breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future.
Since the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP…
Early onset of heatwaves in South Asia calls for a sub-regional action pathway of climate resilience
This year, India and Pakistan have recorded their warmest ever March and April. The pre-monsoon period in South Asia is usually marked with excessively high temperatures, especially in May but early…
As we inch closer to the 1.5°C target and beyond in this century, the sixth generation of CIMP6 climate models (known as Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6) and the Shared Socio-economic…
On January 14, 2022, the South Pacific experienced the incredible force of the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai. The plume reached 30 kilometers into the stratosphere, and the eruption was…
Strengthening resilience and raising climate ambition key for Asian and Pacific countries at COP26
A person in the Asia-Pacific region is four times more at risk of natural hazards than a person in Africa and sixteen times more than someone in North America or Europe. The “riskscape” of the region…
Recent research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has shown that the world is likely to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming much earlier than previously anticipated. The United in…
Resilience in a riskier world
Over the past two decades, the Asia-Pacific region has made remarkable progress in managing disaster risk. But countries can never let down their guard. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its epicentre now…
South-East Asia has long endured severe droughts, which occur on average every five years. The prolonged 2015 and 2018 droughts were the worst on record for two decades. They simultaneously affected…
Where are we going?
Today this question is often answered with a glance at a smartphone and a whole host of behind-the-scenes geospatial and other data working to provide easy-to-understand…
The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought. Yet heat is…