Newsletter Issue 53 (March 2025)

World Meteorological Day 2025 – Closing the early warning gap together

WMO recently confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record. Changes in our environment are driving more extreme weather events. Rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, devastating rainfall, storm surges, flooding, deadly droughts, and wildfires are on the rise. Sea levels are increasing, exposing densely populated coastal areas to coastal inundation and ocean wave impacts.

The weather of February 2025 – A February with close to normal temperature

The monthly mean temperature for February 2025 was 17.3 degrees, close to the normal of 17.1 degrees. The total rainfall recorded at the HKO Headquarters in the month was 26.1 millimetres, about 33 percent below the normal of 38.9 millimetres. The accumulated rainfall in the first two months of the year was 30.3 millimetres, about 42 percent of the normal of 72.1 millimetres for the same period.

Director of HKO highlights the latest services and annual weather outlook

The Director of the Hong Kong Observatory, Dr Chan Pak-wai, hosted a press briefing on March 18 to recap the weather in 2024 and elaborate on the weather outlook for Hong Kong this year as well as the HKO’s latest services.

State of the Global Climate 2024

The clear signs of human-induced climate change reached new heights in 2024, with some of the consequences being irreversible over hundreds if not thousands of years, according to a new report from the WMO, which also underlined the massive economic and social upheavals from extreme weather. Featured articles explore progress towards the Paris Agreement goals and the drivers behind 2024’s record heat.

La Niña event is expected to be short-lived

The weak La Niña event that emerged in December 2024 is likely to be short-lived. Forecasts from the WMO Global Producing Centres for Seasonal Prediction indicate that the current cooler than average sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are expected to return to normal. There is a 60% probability that conditions will shift back to ENSO-neutral conditions (neither El Niño nor La Niña) during March-May 2025, increasing to 70 % for April-June 2025.

February 2025: record low global sea ice cover

February 2025 continues the streak of record or near-record temperatures observed throughout the last two years. One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice, and the record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum. Globally, the surface air temperature for February was 1.59ºC above the estimated 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, the third warmest February on record after February 2024 and February 2016.

The Arctic is in trouble

The Arctic is the early warning system for climate change and the loss of sea ice is a clear sign it’s in trouble, scientists say. It should be reaching its annual maximum levels of ice at this time of year, but instead it’s experiencing record lows. Arctic sea ice bottoms out at the end of summer in September. The last 18 years have seen the lowest sea ice levels on record, a downward spiral that will continue, scientists say. The Arctic will be ice-free in the summer at some point by 2050, even if humans stop pumping out climate pollution, according to a report.

Outcomes of the 62nd Session of IPCC unveiled

On March 2, an outreach event on the 62nd Session of the IPCC was held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, which presented the outcomes of IPCC-62. Mr. XIONG Shaoyuan, Deputy Administrator of the CMA, and Ms. Ko Barrett, Deputy Secretary-General of WMO attended this event. IPCC Bureau Members and the Secretariat, as well as over 50 experts and scholars from universities, research institutes and meteorological departments took part in the event.

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