Devastating floods ravaged multiple regions of the world in 2025, from Southeast Asia to North America and the Middle East.

We asked climate experts what is causing the devastation and what governments should be doing to prevent the situation from becoming even worse in the coming year.

Which places were worst hit by floods in 2025?

“Throughout 2025, a series of major floods occurred worldwide, making flooding the year’s foremost climate hazard,” Pawan Bhattarai, assistant professor at the civil engineering department of Nepal’s Kathmandu-based Tribhuvan University, told Al Jazeera.

Here is a recap of some of the major floods that took place.

Gaza

Heavy downpours and freezing temperatures continue to ravage Gaza, where nearly 2 million people have been displaced during two years of Israeli bombardment that has destroyed much of the Strip.

Many people in Gaza are living in tents amidst rubble from destroyed homes and are largely unprotected from the strong winds and rain.

On Saturday, a polar low-pressure weather system carried particularly heavy rain and strong winds to the Gaza Strip. According to meteorologist Laith al-Allami, this is the third such system to affect the territory in the past few weeks, with a fourth which hit on Monday, Anadolu Agency reported.

One of the previous two was Storm Byron, which brought heavy rainfall and strong winds to Gaza as well as parts of Israel and the wider eastern Mediterranean region earlier this month.

Israel was placed on high alert for that storm – halting military leave, reinforcing emergency teams and safeguarding power supplies. But the UN said 55,000 Palestinian households in Israel lacking basic services and government support were left exposed.

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At least 14 Palestinians in Gaza were killed in the storm, and several were injured. Among the victims was a newborn baby in al-Mawasi, who succumbed to freezing temperatures.

Morocco

Earlier this month, Morocco launched a nationwide emergency relief operation to support people affected by severe flooding as the country battled freezing conditions, torrential rains and snowstorms.

Flash floods killed at least 37 people and damaged about 70 homes and shops in the town of Safi, 300km (186 miles) south of the capital, Rabat.

Prosecutors are investigating whether shortcomings in infrastructure, such as poor drainage, played a role in the disaster.

Indonesia

Floods hit Indonesia in December, killing at least 961 people in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra. More than 20 villages across the ‍three provinces were completely swept away by the floods.

Homes, rice fields, dams and bridges were destroyed, leaving many areas inaccessible.

Illegal logging – often linked to the global demand for palm oil – along with forest loss due to mining, plantations and fires, both exacerbated the disaster in Sumatra.

Flooding was also reported in neighbouring Malaysia around the same time.

Thailand

At least 276 people have been killed in flooding in Thailand in December. The floods badly affected eight provinces in the central plains, four in the south and two in the north, according to the Thai Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation.

Sri Lanka

In late November, floods and landslides killed at least 56 people as Cyclone Ditwah, a deadly tropical storm, swept across Sri Lanka.

The heavy downpour which accompanied the storm destroyed four houses and damaged more than 600. It also caused trees and mud to fall and block multiple roads and railway lines.

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who took office in September 2024, inherited painful austerity measures imposed by his predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, as part of a bailout loan package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), hampering rescue efforts.

“The storm poses a significant challenge to the government that is just beginning to address the social and economic concerns of the people,” Ahilan Kadirgamar, a senior lecturer at the department of sociology, University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka, told Al Jazeera in November.

Nepal

In October, severe floods and landslides hit parts of Nepal and India’s eastern Himalayan city of Darjeeling, killing at least 50 people.

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This year’s rainfall was not record-breaking – overall, there was actually slightly less rain than in 2024, when the Kathmandu Valley saw its heaviest downpour since 2002. In the capital Kathmandu, some districts received just more than 145 mm of rain this year, compared with about 240 mm in late September 2024.

Damage was severe, however, because of “ultra-localised”, heavy rains.

The floods came one month after Nepal’s “Gen Z” protests in Kathmandu and other cities against corruption and nepotism. The protests prompted the deployment of the military and, ultimately, the resignation of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and his replacement by former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, 73, as interim PM.

While experts praised Karki for her interim government’s prompt early weather warnings before the flooding, widespread damage to critical infrastructure during the protests hindered rebuilding and relief operations.

“To prevent future disasters, a major shift in policy and practice is urgently needed. This must prioritise comprehensive watershed management, focusing on stabilising slopes and managing water run-off, which has been a persistently neglected area in our current approach to disaster risk reduction,” Bhattarai, the engineering professor, told Al Jazeera at the time.

Mexico

In October, floods hit Mexico, killing at least 66 people. Tropical storms caused flooding in five states in the country: Veracruz, Puebla, Hidalgo, Queretaro and San Luis Potosi.

More than 16,000 homes around the country were damaged.

Pakistan

Between June and August, several regions of Pakistan experienced flooding triggered by torrential rains. More than 700 people were killed around the country.

Floods devastated the Buner district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and the southern city of Karachi also suffered major flooding caused by high-intensity rains over a short period of time.

Rainfall continued in Pakistan and neighbouring countries until late August, and floods prompted the evacuation of 500,000 people in the Punjab province.

On August 31, a magnitude-6 earthquake hit Afghanistan near its border with Pakistan, killing more than 1,400 people, according to the government. Efforts to rescue people affected by the earthquake were hindered because flash floods had affected the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, which borders Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

United States

As of last week, more than 40 million Americans had been placed under winter storm warnings or weather advisories. Another 30 million have been alerted to flood or storm advisories in California, where a so-called “atmospheric river” has brought a deluge of rain.

An atmospheric river is a long, narrow band of air in the atmosphere that carries large amounts of water vapour.

Last week, thousands of flights in the US were cancelled because of winter storm Devin, which caused blizzards in the Midwest and northeast and heavy snow forecasts across parts of both regions.

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Earlier in the year, several US states, including Texas, West Virginia, New Mexico and New Jersey, were hit by flash floods – sudden and rapid flooding of low-lying areas – in July.

These floods were mostly caused by heavy rainfall over a short period of time.

Flash floods in Texas killed more than 100 people in July 2025. Within two hours of flooding, the Guadalupe River breached its banks, with waters rising higher than two-storey buildings to about 9 metres (30ft).

Twenty-five girls and two counsellors were killed, and other people went missing when the floods hit the riverside Camp Mystic, a private Christian summer camp for girls.

The river has previously experienced major floods in 1936, 1952, 1972, 1973, 1978, 1987, 1991 and 1997, according to a guide prepared by the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, a Texas state agency dedicated to conserving the water resources of the river basin.

The 1987 deluge was particularly disastrous and also hit a summer camp, killing 10 teenagers at the Pot O’ Gold Christian Camp near Comfort, Texas, according to local media. But the National Weather Service (NWS) said in July this year, the Guadalupe River rose beyond 1987 levels.

So, were the 2025 floods worse than in previous years?

In some places, yes.

In the US, for example, flooding does appear to have worsened steadily for the past few years. The period between January and September 2025 saw the highest number of flood and flash flood events and the highest number of associated human casualties in five years, Nasir Gharaibeh, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Texas A&M University, told Al Jazeera.

From January to September, there were 7,074 floods in the US, which caused 242 deaths, according to the Storm Events Database, which is managed by the US National Weather Service (NWS) of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

For the same period last year, there were 6,551 floods, which resulted in 151 deaths. In 2023, there were 5,783 floods, which caused 93 deaths for the same period. In 2022, 4,548 floods caused 102 deaths.

However, experts said that in other regions in the world, 2025 was not much worse than previous years.

“There have been equally dramatic years in South Asia and East Asia,” Daanish Mustafa, a professor in critical geography at King’s College, London, told Al Jazeera.

“Nowhere did I hear that any flood flow record was broken. It’s just that flood plains were more urbanised, rivers more regulated, where the regulatory infrastructure failed, as in Sri Lanka and India,” said Mustafa.

Why were floods so severe in 2025?

Flooding was worsened by a variety of factors in 2025, experts told us throughout the year. “Flooding is a complex hazard. It occurs because of interactions between many variables related to weather, infrastructure, land cover and topography and other factors,” Gharaibeh said.

Climate change is a major factor in causing weather events, researchers say. “The specific triggers varied from city to city in 2025, yet a single, universal force magnified them all: Climate change, which supercharges rainfall extremes,” said Bhattarai.

Climate change is causing monsoon rains to intensify, for example, resulting in more frequent extreme precipitation events. This is because rising temperatures cause the atmosphere to hold more moisture, leading to heavier downpours during storms.

In northern Pakistan, these higher temperatures are also accelerating glacial melting, which increases the likelihood of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).

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Furthermore, Abdullah Ansari, a research professor at the Earthquake Monitoring Center at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman, told Al Jazeera, “research has shown that seasonal rains and weather conditions can intensify earthquake-induced vulnerabilities by triggering landslides, damaging access routes and disrupting communication lines.”

“The year was further distinguished by unusual patterns, including late-season monsoon floods, rare cyclonic activity, and extreme rainfall in regions not traditionally prone to flooding,” Bhattarai said.

But climate change is not the full story.

“This global driver met a local vulnerability: Urban landscapes fundamentally unequipped for the new reality. The result was a surge in flash floods – where overwhelming water meets inflexible design – turning sudden downpours into city-wide disasters,” Bhattarai said.

“While climate change plays a critical role in intensifying flooding events in Pakistan, other factors such as urbanisation, deforestation, inadequate infrastructure, and poor river management also contribute significantly,” Ayyoob Sharifi, a professor and urban scientist at Hiroshima University in Japan, told Al Jazeera in August.

Additionally, a lack of adequate drainage systems and early warning systems can exacerbate the effects of flooding.

A rise in the number of flash floods has also caused greater damage.

“In the US, we are seeing a higher number of flood-related casualties, in part due to an increase in rainfall-induced flash flooding,” Gharaibeh told Al Jazeera.

“Flash floods often occur with little warning, and the flood water flows with high velocities and destructive force, making them among the most dangerous natural hazards,” he added, explaining that the level of danger is measured by the ratio of deaths to people affected.

Overall, Bhattarai described the catastrophic flooding of 2025 as “a collision of intense meteorological events and long-term human decisions”.

“On the weather side, the primary drivers have been cloudbursts and stalled rain systems. These phenomena deliver short-duration, high-intensity rainfall, resulting in record daily rainfall totals that overwhelm drainage systems in a matter of hours.”

But human development has dramatically amplified the damage caused by floods, he said.

“Decades of river encroachment and floodplains converted into urban land have eliminated nature’s safety buffers. Rivers, now constricted and unable to spread out, surge with greater force and speed into populated areas that were once natural absorption zones.

“Essentially, we have built cities in the path of the water and then removed all its escape routes, turning heavy rain into disastrous floods.”

How can we improve flood responses in future?

Experts say governments will have to adapt to new weather patterns, which are resulting in more frequent and intense rainfall and flooding – and will have to change their approach to surviving floods.

Mustafa said: “Societies are continuing on their path of trying to fight floods, regulate rivers and build obstructive infrastructure in flood plains. All of these efforts have always failed and caused destruction and always will. But I fear the societies will continue apace.

“Don’t try to fight floods; learn to live with them. Don’t try to control and restrict river flows, give rivers room to flow,” he advised.

“Societies can and have engineered away high-frequency, low-intensity events. But in the process, they’ve made low-frequency, high-intensity events much worse. And this is particularly destructive in the climate change present, where all of your historical patterns, which are the basis of infrastructural design, are meaningless.”

Mustafa explained that infrastructure such as dams, levees and barrages are built to handle floods of a certain size and frequency.

He explained that these are built for 100-, 500- or 1,000-year events, meaning events with 1 percent, 0.5 percent or 0.1 percent chance of recurrence in any given year, respectively. He added that most infrastructure is designed for 100-year events.

Engineers use records of natural disasters to build this infrastructure.

“Assumption is that historical trends will continue into the future. With climate change, that assumption doesn’t hold,” Mustafa said.

Bhattarai said the 2025 floods underscored the need for faster, community-focused responses with clear local warnings, stronger coordination, urban-specific plans, protection of vulnerable groups and safer rebuilding that reduces future flood risks.

Gharaibeh said appropriate solutions will vary, depending on which part of the world is experiencing the flooding.

“Some parts of the world should start investing in their flood control infrastructure, including roadway systems, where roads are used as ‘drainage channels’. Other parts of the world should invest in building better warning systems.”

Gharaibeh explained that since funding is usually limited, controlling floods requires prioritisation of investment.

“Countries like the United States and Japan, for example, have built – and continue to build – robust flood control infrastructure because they have a long history of flooding issues.”

Even so, recent flash flood events, such as the flood that affected Texas in 2025, indicate that countries like the US should invest more in building better warning systems.

“On the other hand, Middle Eastern countries, for example, appear to lack the necessary infrastructure to control flooding. These countries should start investing in their flood control infrastructure.”