For generations, Abdul Karim never needed a weather app. Standing in his wheat field in southern Punjab, he could tell when the rains were coming by watching the movement of birds, the direction of the wind and the colour of the evening sky. His father taught him those signs, and his grandfather had done the same before him. But today, at 58, Karim says those lessons no longer work.
“The seasons have changed,” he says, looking across fields that should have been greener. “Sometimes the rain comes all at once and destroys everything. Sometimes it does not come at all.”
His story is no longer unusual. From Pakistan’s floodplains and Himalayan valleys to Bangladesh’s cyclone-hit coast and Nepal’s glacier-fed rivers, millions of people are discovering that nature no longer follows the rhythms they once trusted. The calendar still marks the arrival of summer, the monsoon and winter, but the weather has begun to write its own schedule.
Climate change is often described through scientific reports filled with graphs, temperature records and emissions targets. Yet its real story unfolds in homes where families rebuild after floods, on farms where crops fail under relentless heat and in cities where concrete traps dangerous temperatures long after sunset. Across South Asia, climate change is not waiting for the future. It has become part of daily life.
The region is home to nearly two billion people, making it one of the most densely populated and climate vulnerable areas in the world. It contains some of the planet’s highest mountains, longest rivers, fastest-growing cities and most productive agricultural lands. It also faces increasingly severe floods, heatwaves, droughts, cyclones and glacial hazards.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, Asia has warmed faster than the global average over recent decades. The organisation’s latest assessments show that 2024 ranked among the warmest years ever recorded across the continent. Rising temperatures have accelerated glacier loss, increased the frequency of marine heatwaves and intensified extreme rainfall events. Scientists warn that these trends are expected to continue unless global greenhouse gas emissions decline significantly.
Few countries illustrate this crisis more clearly than Pakistan.
Although Pakistan contributes less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it consistently ranks among the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Geography plays a major role. The country stretches from the snow-covered peaks of the Karakoram and Himalayas to the deserts of Balochistan and the Arabian Sea coast, exposing communities to multiple climate risks at the same time.
The floods of 2022 remain one of the starkest reminders of this vulnerability. Triggered by record monsoon rainfall and accelerated glacier melt, the disaster submerged nearly one-third of the country. More than 33 million people were affected. Entire villages disappeared beneath muddy water. Thousands of kilometres of roads and hundreds of bridges collapsed. Schools became emergency shelters while hospitals struggled to treat patients arriving with injuries, dehydration and waterborne diseases.
The destruction did not end when the floodwaters receded. In Sindh, many farming families lost not only their homes but also the seeds, livestock and agricultural equipment that sustained their livelihoods. Children missed months of education because classrooms had either been destroyed or converted into relief camps. Public health experts warned of rising cases of malaria, cholera and dengue as stagnant water created ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes.
For many families, recovery is still unfinished.
Travelling through flood-affected districts months after the disaster, aid workers found people living under plastic sheets where homes once stood. Some had received emergency assistance, while others continued to rely on relatives or community support. Climate disasters, they discovered, rarely end with the television cameras leaving.
Scientists increasingly describe such events as “compound disasters,” where one crisis triggers another. Floods destroy crops, leading to food shortages. Food shortages increase poverty. Poverty limits people’s ability to rebuild before the next disaster arrives. Climate change magnifies these interconnected risks.
Yet floods tell only part of Pakistan’s climate story.
Every summer now brings growing concern over extreme heat. Jacobabad, one of the hottest cities on Earth, has repeatedly recorded temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius. In Karachi, rising humidity makes prolonged heat even more dangerous because the human body struggles to cool itself through sweating. Construction workers, traffic police, street vendors and sanitation workers spend hours outdoors, often without adequate protection.
Doctors say heatstroke cases have become increasingly common during prolonged hot spells. Hospitals prepare emergency wards while local authorities establish temporary cooling centres. For people who cannot afford air conditioning or uninterrupted electricity, surviving the hottest days often becomes a daily struggle rather than an inconvenience.
Heat also carries hidden economic costs. Productivity declines as outdoor labour becomes more dangerous. Electricity demand surges because of increased cooling needs, placing additional pressure on already strained power systems. Farmers face lower crop yields as prolonged heat damages wheat, maize and vegetable production. Livestock also suffer from water shortages and heat stress.
Climate change is reshaping Pakistan’s water resources in equally complex ways.
The country’s northern mountains contain more glaciers than anywhere outside the polar regions. These glaciers feed the Indus River system, which supports agriculture, drinking water and hydropower for millions of people. Rising temperatures have accelerated glacier melting, increasing the formation of unstable glacial lakes.
These lakes sometimes burst without warning, releasing enormous volumes of water that rush through mountain valleys, destroying roads, schools, bridges and farmland within minutes. Such Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, commonly known as GLOFs, have become an increasing concern for communities in Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Local residents have adapted in remarkable ways. Some villages have developed community-based early warning systems. Volunteers monitor rivers during periods of intense melting while emergency evacuation drills prepare residents for sudden flooding. These local initiatives save lives, but experts caution that adaptation alone cannot eliminate growing climate risks.
Agriculture remains another major casualty of changing weather.
Nearly 40 percent of Pakistan’s workforce depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. Traditional planting calendars that guided farmers for generations are becoming less reliable as rainfall patterns shift. Some regions receive intense rainfall within a few days instead of steady precipitation spread across the season. Others experience prolonged droughts that reduce groundwater supplies and damage crops before harvest.
In Balochistan, farmers already living in one of Pakistan’s driest provinces face shrinking water availability alongside rising temperatures. Fruit orchards that once produced reliable harvests now require greater investment in irrigation, while many small farmers struggle to cope with rising production costs.
Climate experts argue that the challenge is no longer simply producing more food. It is producing food under increasingly unpredictable weather conditions.
The effects extend far beyond rural communities. When agricultural production declines, food prices increase in urban markets. Inflation places additional pressure on households already coping with higher energy and transportation costs. Climate change therefore becomes an economic issue affecting nearly every citizen, regardless of where they live.
Pakistan is not confronting these challenges alone.
Across South Asia, climate extremes are becoming increasingly interconnected. India has experienced repeated heatwaves affecting hundreds of millions of people, alongside devastating floods in states such as Assam and Himachal Pradesh. Bangladesh continues to battle stronger cyclones and rising sea levels that threaten low-lying coastal communities. Nepal faces growing risks from melting Himalayan glaciers, while Afghanistan has endured prolonged droughts that have worsened food insecurity and displaced rural populations.
Despite their different landscapes and political systems, these countries share one common reality. Their economies, food systems and water resources remain deeply dependent on climate patterns that are becoming less predictable each year.
The climate crisis in South Asia is no longer measured only by rising temperatures. It is measured by interrupted school years, shrinking harvests, disappearing livelihoods and families forced to leave homes they expected to pass on to future generations.
