Southeast Asia is facing a crisis unlike any in recent memory, as catastrophic floods and relentless storms have battered the region in late 2025, leaving a trail of devastation that stretches from Indonesia and Sri Lanka to Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The scale and severity of these disasters have stunned local communities, overwhelmed governments, and drawn urgent warnings from scientists who say this may be the new normal in a world increasingly shaped by climate change.
By December 3, 2025, the death toll from floods and landslides had soared past 1,400 across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, according to the Associated Press. More than 1,000 people remain missing, and millions have been displaced from their homes. In Indonesia, entire villages have been cut off after bridges and roads were swept away, while thousands in Sri Lanka are struggling without access to clean water. The impacts are visible everywhere: streets turned into rivers, homes and cars submerged, and families forced to rebuild from scratch with little support.
The onslaught of extreme weather has not been limited to one country or even one storm. In the week leading up to December 1, three cyclones—Ditwah, Senyar, and another unnamed—struck simultaneously across South and Southeast Asia, as reported by regional news outlets. Cyclone Ditwah battered Sri Lanka and was expected to move toward India, while Cyclone Senyar hit Indonesia before heading for Malaysia. Since the start of 2025, there have been at least 16 cyclones and dozens of depressions swirling in the Pacific and Indian oceans, an intensity that has left communities with little time to recover between disasters.
Even moderate cyclones are now producing extreme rainfall, causing landslides and flash floods with devastating consequences. Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, told reporters, “It is the rainfall and the cascading impacts—landslides and flash floods—that stand out this year, not necessarily the number of storms.” The president of Sri Lanka echoed this sentiment, calling the current crisis “the largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history,” and noting that it exceeds the scope of the 2004 tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people across the region.
Thailand has not been spared. The prime minister publicly acknowledged shortcomings in the government’s response to the floods, which have left parts of the country under water and caused significant financial losses. According to Thailand’s agriculture ministry, the country has suffered about $47 million in agricultural losses since August, and the November floods in southern Thailand alone caused approximately $781 million in damage, potentially shaving 0.1% off the nation’s GDP, as estimated by the Kasikorn Research Center. Malaysia, too, is still reeling from one of its worst floods on record, which killed three people and displaced thousands.
Vietnam and the Philippines have endured a year of punishing storms and floods, with hundreds of deaths reported. Vietnam estimates that it lost more than $3 billion in the first 11 months of 2025 due to floods, landslides, and storms. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s annual average losses from natural disasters are $1.37 billion, though official data for 2025 is not yet available.
What makes this year’s disasters feel unprecedented is the convergence of meteorological and environmental factors that scientists have long warned about. In 2024, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide jumped by the most on record, turbocharging the climate and leading to more extreme weather, according to the United Nations World Meteorological Organization. Asia is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, making storms stronger and wetter while rising sea levels amplify storm surges. Benjamin Horton, a professor of earth science at the City University of Hong Kong, explained, “Warmer ocean temperatures provide more energy for storms, making them stronger and wetter, while rising sea levels amplify storm surges.”
Storms are also arriving later in the year and with greater unpredictability, a pattern scientists attribute to the effects of climate change on air and ocean currents, including the influence of El Niño. With more moisture in the air and shifting wind patterns, storms can form quickly and strike with little warning. “While the total number of storms may not dramatically increase, their severity and unpredictability will,” Horton warned.
Governments across the region are struggling to keep up. Aslam Perwaiz of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center in Bangkok said the unpredictability, intensity, and frequency of recent extreme weather events are overwhelming Southeast Asian governments. He pointed to a tendency to focus on disaster response rather than preparation, cautioning, “Future disasters will give us even less lead time to prepare.”
The human cost of these disasters is staggering, especially for the most vulnerable. In Sri Lanka’s hardest-hit provinces, little has changed since the 2004 tsunami, said Sarala Emmanuel, a human-rights researcher in Batticaloa. “When a disaster like this happens, the poor and marginalized communities are the worst affected,” Emmanuel observed, highlighting the plight of tea plantation workers living in landslide-prone areas. Unregulated development and deforestation have made matters worse. Since 2000, the flood-inundated Indonesian provinces of Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra have lost 19,600 square kilometers (7,569 square miles) of forest, an area larger than the state of New Jersey, according to Global Forest Watch. Videos of logs swept downstream in Indonesia suggest that deforestation has exacerbated the floods, though officials deny illegal logging is to blame.
The economic toll is equally daunting. Countries are losing billions of dollars each year due to climate change-related disasters. For Sri Lanka, the costs are especially painful, as the nation contributes only a tiny fraction of global carbon emissions but is on the frontlines of climate impacts. Sandun Thudugala of the Law and Society Trust in Colombo pleaded for international support, stating, “There is also an urgent need for vulnerable countries like ours to get compensated for loss and damages we suffer because of global warming.”
At the COP30 global climate conference held last month in Brazil, countries pledged to triple funding for climate adaptation and make $1.3 trillion in annual climate financing available by 2035. But many observers remain skeptical. As Thomas Houlie of the science and policy institute Climate Analytics put it, “What we’re seeing in the region is dramatic and it’s unfortunately a stark reminder of the consequences of the climate crisis.”
For now, Southeast Asia stands at a crossroads. The region is expanding its use of renewable energy but remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels. The disasters of 2025 have made it clear that the stakes could not be higher, and the need for both immediate action and long-term resilience has never been more urgent.
