Jakarta: More than 1,700 people have died and over a million have been displaced across Asia in recent weeks as floods and landslides swept through densely populated cities, river basins, and deforested slopes. Experts warn that the scale of destruction signals a future in which extreme weather becomes more frequent amid a warming climate.

According to Anadolu Agency, Indonesia and Sri Lanka endured the heaviest losses, with entire districts inundated, transport links severed, and economic damage running into billions of dollars. Hundreds remain missing.

The Asia-Pacific region, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said, faces the world's most intense and frequent cyclone activity, with 'record-breaking rainfall, storm surges, and floods' that repeatedly displace millions and cause massive economic damage. Of the more than 1,700 reported deaths in the recent floods, around 836 were recorded in Indonesia and over 600 in Sri Lanka. On Sumatra Island alone, flooding is estimated to have caused more than $4 billion in damage, while Sri Lanka has sought $200 million in emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund to address the losses.

Scientists say the new pattern of devastation emerging across South and Southeast Asia reflects a broader climate shift. 'Climate change is not irrelevant,' Daanish Mustafa, a professor in critical geography at King's College London, told Anadolu. 'One promise of climate change is that all historical trends, averages, and normals are irrelevant. What will be the new normal? We don't know. Are these floods part of the new normal? Probably.'

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, told Anadolu that the devastating floods and landslides across South and Southeast Asia 'are part of a broader shift in the region's climate.' 'Warmer oceans and a warmer atmosphere are now loading storms with far more moisture, so even weak cyclones can produce extreme rainfall,' he said. He explained that the resulting deluges trigger upstream landslides and downstream flash floods that leave communities with little time to react.

Experts said that even without climate change, rapid urbanization has left the region dangerously exposed. Mustafa pointed to unchecked construction, concrete expansion, and high-density settlement in flood plains across the region. He cited Sri Lanka as a case study, saying large populations in Colombo live 'in the lower reaches of the Kelani River, where most devastation has taken place.'

Dwikorita Karnawati, former director of Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency, told Anadolu that many of the areas destroyed in Indonesia were built inside zones where rivers naturally expand during heavy rainfall. 'The zone originally belongs to the river to flow there,' she said. 'When we live there, we stay within the zone where the river should flow.'

Indonesia's challenge is further compounded by geology. Dwikorita said the country's mountains are 'very steep, then immediately flat,' a topography that makes them dangerously prone to sudden landslides once saturated. Although she said Indonesia's disaster-response capacity has improved over recent years, climate change is pushing events to 'higher and higher intensity and longer and longer duration,' requiring preparedness 'to be much more scaled up.'

The Philippines has shown improvements in early disaster response, experts said, though the country remains among the world's most exposed to storms. Gerry Bagtasa, professor at the University of the Philippines, said urbanization is likely worsening storm impacts, but public trust in the national weather agency and local disaster managers 'has been high in recent years.'

Experts say that while some South Asian nations have made strides in early-warning systems and disaster response, the speed and intensity of climate change are outpacing these gains. Recent improvements, they said, show that progress is possible - but not nearly fast enough for the scale of what is coming. Mustafa added that the disasters of recent weeks should be treated as a warning of what unchecked warming will bring.