Southeast Asia’s climate has become substantially warmer and more unpredictable in the last ten years. Mean temperatures are around 3 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1950-1980 period, and the range of temperatures has widened by around 2 degrees.
Southeast Asia’s weather to become HOTTER and more VOLATILE
Some countries have been especially-heavily impacted. Increases in
temperatures and temperature volatility has been greatest in Thailand and
Vietnam, with Malaysia and Philippines also visibly impacted. Rainfall has on
average trended down in recent decades, but volatility has increased, with far
greater occurrences of higher-than-average rainfall months.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that weather extremes
will become far more likely in climate futures which have a higher degree of global warming.
In a world which warms to 2 degrees above pre-industrial averages, extreme temperatures will occur around twice as often as they do now. However, even if global warming is successfully contained to 1.5 degrees periods of extreme weather will become increasingly common.
Microsoft Word – FIA climate paper final (oxfordeconomics.com)
