Weather and climate extremes in populated global monsoon regions in 2025

The year 2025 is on track to be the second or third warmest year on record. Accompanying the exceptional heat, weather and climate extremes continued to swipe across the globe, with unprecedented magnitudes in many cases. The global monsoon regions were severely affected and hit with massive social and economic disruption, due to the combination of hazards and high exposure and vulnerability. This paper provides an overview of the extreme events that struck global monsoon regions in 2025, including their characteristics, extremity, and the resulting impacts, e.g., the spatially compound extreme rainfall-heatwaves throughout summer and autumn in East Asia, the extremely wet monsoon in South Asia, devastating tropical cyclones in various monsoon regions, etc. Brief physical background, especially the connections with monsoon activities, is also provided for understanding these extreme events. This provides insights into scientific challenges that remain to be addressed to improve our understanding for extreme events in monsoon regions.