2024 was the hottest year on record, and the Asia-Pacific region continues to heat up, even as the summer of 2025 approaches. In response to the escalating threat of extreme heat, the UN Secretary-General launched the Call to Action on Extreme Heat on 25 July 2024, urging coordinated global efforts. As 2025 marks the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, this is a critical moment to emphasize the far-reaching implications of extreme heat on the region’s diverse mountain and glacier systems—and to propose urgent policy measures to enhance adaptation and resilience.
Heat in the cryosphere is rising
Science is unequivocal: rising temperatures are accelerating glacier melt, reducing snow cover, increasing permafrost thaw, and triggering more extreme rainfall events and natural hazards. The cryosphere—Earth’s frozen water systems—is a crucial planetary lifeline. Its white snow-covered surfaces, with high albedo, reflect solar radiation back into space. As this albedo effect diminishes, global impacts mount such as rising sea levels, water scarcity and the release of carbon stored in permafrost.
Moreover, warming in the cryosphere leads to complex risks through climatic and hydrological teleconnections, particularly between the Arctic and the Third Pole. These interconnected changes threaten not just local ecosystems but global climate stability.
Asia's mountains and glaciers under pressure
The Asia-Pacific region is home to the world’s highest mountains and most extensive glacier systems. The Third Pole, which includes the Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding Pamir–Hindu Kush Himalaya, Hengduan, Tien Shan and Qilian Mountain ranges, spans approximately 5 million km², with 100,000 km² of glaciers. Known as the Water Tower of Asia, this region stores more ice and snow than any area outside the Arctic and Antarctic and feeds over ten major rivers, sustaining nearly 2 billion people across Central, Northeast, South, and Southeast Asia.
The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region, shared by eight countries—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar and Pakistan—hosts the largest volume of ice and snow outside the poles. These glaciers are the source of ten of Asia’s greatest rivers, supporting the drinking water, agriculture, energy, sanitation, and industry needs of 1.3 billion people living both in the mountains and downstream.
In Central Asia, the Pamir and Tian Shan ranges extend across Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Karakoram range spans China, India and Pakistan. These mountain systems are vital sources of freshwater for hydropower, agriculture, domestic consumption and industrial use.
The Mekong River, flowing through China, Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, originates from glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. While meltwater from these glaciers supports regional water supply, accelerating melt poses long-term risks to water availability and ecological stability.
Heat amplifies glacial riskscape
Asia’s mountain ranges and glaciers are among the most vulnerable to climatic, environmental, and societal pressures—and they are warming at rates that exceed the global average. The Third Pole is one of the world’s most biologically diverse and ecologically fragile zones, is increasingly exposed to extreme heat.
Under global warming scenarios of 1.5–2°C, projections suggest that glacier volume in the HKH region could decline by 30–50 per cent by 2100. These warming and melting trends are expected to cause significant changes, including increased total runoff across the Third Pole region, particularly affecting monsoon-dominated river basins. While the impacts vary by river system, research highlights the critical role of glacial melt in triggering glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), flash floods, landslides and increased damage to human settlements, agricultural and pasture lands, transport infrastructure, and hydropower systems. Many of these impacts are likely to exceed current adaptation capacities.
Regional solutions are key
The high variability in mountain climate, topography, geology, and vegetation—all of which shape the glacial riskscape of the Third Pole—calls for coherent, science-based, and context-specific regional cooperation frameworks. Notable initiatives include the WMO’s Third Pole Regional Climate Centre Network (TPRCC-Network), UNESCO’s Central Asian Regional Glaciological Centre and ICIMOD’s leadership through the Hindu Kush Himalaya Call to Action.
Effective climate risk information and early warning systems in the Third Pole require the seamless integration of multi-temporal datasets, ranging from decadal to seasonal, sub-seasonal, medium-, and short-term time scales. While downscaling large-scale climate models helps address long-term trends, regional forums such as the Third Pole Climate Forum (TPCF), complemented by sub-regional forums like the North Eurasian Climate Outlook Forum (NEACOF), the South Asia Climate Outlook Forum (SASCOF) and the ASEAN Climate Outlook Forum (ASEANCOF) play a vital role in providing seasonal outlooks and bridging gaps in the climate information value chain—critical for early warning and early action.
Furthermore, understanding glacier teleconnections and their far-reaching impacts—sometimes extending tens of miles beyond the source—is key to developing impact-based forecasting (IBF) systems that enable early and anticipatory action. ESCAP has developed tailored tools that translate seasonal outlooks into impact-based scenarios, identifying vulnerable communities, sectors and systems. This is an important tool for effective early warnings for all in specific context of glacial hazards of the Third Pole. Embedded within existing regional and sub-regional cooperation frameworks, these tools represent a critical step toward supporting risk-informed decision-making and coordinated adaptation strategies across the diverse national and administrative boundaries of the Third Pole.