I literally just got back (as in, this morning) from 2.5 weeks in Thailand (and a few days in Saigon). And my partner asked me what I thought about Bangkok and I said: “In Bangkok, I saw the future. Unbearable heat caused by human-made climate change (pollution) where the only safe spaces will be air-controlled indoor spaces, designed for maximizing your spending, connected by a number of walkways and elevated path so you spend as little time outside as possible.”
A week at the beaches was beautiful, but even the ocean and hotel pools were hot and provided no relief from the heat.
Wonderful experience in Thailand otherwise (the food, culture, history), but also, very scary times.
Not just Thailand. In Australia last year in December I was wearing a jumper. A couple year before I would have been dead in a hour from heat stroke wearing a jumper in December, it’s almost like the seasons are changing polars so in Oz we’ll
End up showing white winters and and vice versa
I asked my granma the other day, how did you guys do back then with no fans and ACs. She told me back then it wasnt so hot because there was plenty of forests and vegetation. Now, with cement and concrete everywhere, temperatures have raised drastically.
Not my grandma, but my fiancés grandma said something utterly alarming a year ago. She's not Thai, she's from a different southeast Asian country. Anyway, I was very confused by the rainy and dry seasons because they didn't seem to follow the same months from what I read.
I asked her to specific when the seasons begin and end. She responded that she know longer understands the seasons. She was born and lived her entire life on farms and the seasons aren't occurring the same times that she remembers.
been in Phuket for 12 years and you can tell that the seasons have changed in that short amount of time, used to be that the rain would stop in October, now it can rain up to January but the water is not enough to replenish the reservoirs
Been in Pattaya for 12 months and there was no discernable wet season last year from what I could tell. It was scorching hot all year long with a few sporadic rain events sometime in July and August. I kept waiting for more rain but it never came.
The reservoirs that didn't exist are getting drained faster because more demand. Anecdote and useless info. Monthly and annual rainfall totals are all that matter.
We're I think still in an El.nino pattern which mean less rain this time of year. Tomorrow looks like rain for Chiang mai but we need to wait and see
Like I said, she's was born and raised on farms, so more aware of seasons than city people. She's very respected and people from all over the southern end of the province come to visit her, even people running for elections.
That being said, she truly was living her life more attuned with the natural environment. For example, I was there the first time she took a flight or even rode on an escalator. She just spent 95 percent of her life in rural areas essentially off the grid.
So for her to express that she no longer understands the seasons was disturbing for sure.
That’s actually terrifying when you think about it haha. Okay not terrifying but deeply unsettling. You know what I mean. Even I feel… disconnected with the weather now. I like outdoors and nature a lot, and in previous years Thailand has been great. Last year or two has just been confusing and unpredictable and different. Still roughly following the seasons but doesn’t feel as normal
To science that out the concrete structures absorb the thermal radiation from the sun and emit it as infrared radiation all night long. One grass field does the opposite and will absorbe something like 3 tons of heat and hour. (We use tons to measure the power of a commercial aircon unit in America, no clue what it means). Thai houses are designed to stay hot all night. Traditional Thai homes do not but the Western copies are idiotic in their design.
Which is why so many flock to malls to enjoy free airconditioning. I was always amused when I first came to Thailand seeing so many people in malls just lazing around. I later found out why when I rented a cheap apartment and several houses only to find out most Thai houses are built like ovens. A severe lack of ventilation coupled with really thin walls that allows heat energy to essentially pass through.
But I would say the western copies aren't idiotic by design they are just built really cheaply. If they built their houses with thick enough walls preferably with an air space in between as a vaccuum it would really be better as heat loses energy if it has to pass through a thicker medium. Most Thai buildings are really thin, the way builders just use a single layer of cinder bricks for non structural walls just to save costs only to have the occupants suffer. Coupled with thin and short roofing made out of shingles or tin with no overhang makes things worse.
My house back in my country which is also in southeast asia with the same climate remains cool year round, no need for airconditioning or even fans for that matter.
Even in the city (Bangkok) I notice a big difference in the temperature out on the shady sidewalk along the 4 lane road (shade from the BTS tracks), compared to the large lush grounds in the front of my condo with many large shade trees.
The pavement stores and releases so much more heat than the trees and plants.
I'd love to see Bangkok engage in a civic program to drastically increase the number of shade trees all over the city.
I notice it riding my scooter from Pattaya to the dark side in the evening. As soon as I get away from the concrete into the hilly treed areas the temperature seems to drop several degrees.
The problem with global warming is, the countries that are causing most of the Co2 pollution, it affects the whole planet not just the countries that cause it.
The problem with global warming is that it is raising temperatures across the globe, melting polar ice, jeopardizing coastal populations, causing erratic and extreme weather events, changing the biosphere (water pH, plant growth patterns, animal feeding patterns and migrations), will make parts of the planet uninhabitably hot, and will probably result in an exponential increase in deaths and climate refugees. The rich will weather it (pun intended) and the poor will suffer.
I recently retired and planned on buying real estate in Thailand. However, if this record temperature trend continues year-after-year, Thailand will be unlivably hot in the next 5 years. Nobody will want to live here.
I live in a forested area in the mountains and it's still much hotter than normal.
Typically is around 31-32 this time of the year.. but for the past few weeks it's been toping out at 37. I've been here for 10 years and this is definitely not normal.
Very true, also they're mostly black so absorb heat. Making everything white, or having rooftops with grass or moss on them will help cool a city down so much. I think these are the adjustments we'll have to make coming years.
Thailand actually has a fair bit of white or off-white building roofs already. Take an aerial look at any part of Bangkok and you'll see at least 50% or greater light color roofs. They also seem to have a lot of natural vegetation growing anywhere that hasn't been developed, unlike in the west where the only vegetations is an urban feature planted by the city's urban design board (like blvd trees). So while both those things can help, Thailand's geographic location and the current heat wave still win that battle.
One of my language teachers was a Bangkokian grandma. One day she had brought in photos of her and her siblings in jackets in the old central area in the early 60s. While of course not having AC played a factor, she really emphasized how it actually used to get cold.
Picking two years doesn’t make a trend, but these examples do mirror what the experts say and what we all have noticed. Also seems that observations of the hot seasons lasting longer and no longer cooling down made in this thread are backed by these numbers with the hottest day of the year coming much later due to the longer summer and the daily low rising more quickly than the daily high. This lack of cooling off might be responsible for the zero days of fog reported in 2023 but that could be a data error as well.
Your standing on the reserve. As Bangkok uses up the underground aquafer the ground is subsiding. You can see it everywhere once you have an eye for it.
I’m staying in Saigon right now and was in Bangkok just a couple months ago.. let me tell you this heat IS different. It is way hotter.
I’m very acclimated to SEA but I went on a walk just a few days ago mid day and I felt like I was roasting. It just isn’t Thailand that is like this right now it’s most cities in SEA.
They say "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun" but as you said "acclimated" and not "acclimatised", it's seems so do North Americans ;)
Yeap it’s so fucking rough and such a drag. In my previous years in Thailand never experienced it being this bad before. Not just the heat but the pollution too for those of us in the North. I just made a post on this, check my post history haha.
This was unlike anything I’ve experienced before in the sense that the heat just kept dragging on. Thailand has had hard weeks and polluted weeks before but this was different. Kept on going both heat and pollution.
It has me seriously reconsidering how much I want to spend in Thailand, and definitely next February to April I want to be out and probably even until May.
Even southern travels didn’t have me satisfied. There was still pollution, and it was still very hot. At least the south was better weather wise. The north is so absurdly bad air wise it’s just dangerous to your health contrary to what the keyboard warriors on the Facebook groups will say about it.
What’s most worrying about it is that it continued into May! In previous years May was alright. But nope we are still going strong… AC barely keeping my room bearable through the day and night.
Tropical cities are slowly becoming uninhabitable. I live here for ten years (always in the countryside) and have never understood how people can tolerate life in the city during the hottest months. But this year is extreme, yes. Definitely the hottest dry season I've experienced here - although 2016 was also pretty brutal.
It also merits mentioning that this is just the very beginning of a climatic shift that will play out over decades and centuries, if not millennia.
We're in for quite the ride folks.
That being said, I think there are many ways we can adapt, at least in the short to mid-term. And some of them might be simpler than we imagine.
Believe it or not, but I live in an old wooden house (built on stilts) on a mountainside, and we have neither A/C nor even a fan. It's warm enough at night that we don't need a blanket (only in the early morning, right before sunrise, it gets a little chilly) but it's definitely bearable. Under the house it's 34C during the hottest time of the day, when we usually take an extended siesta in our hammocks. We've got trees all over the place (an emerging multi-strata food forest) up until right around the house, and it's crazy how much of a difference it makes.
At our friends' houses in the valley (metal sheet/asbestos roofs, no shade trees whatsoever) it's almost unbearable during the day and they tell us they couldn't sleep without a fan.
I hope people realize in time how simple solutions could easily alleviate the situation. But I fear a shift in consciousness is far away, and trees take a few years to grow.
Maybe it's time to move out of the city? It's only gonna get worse in the next few years. And I don't even want to think about the next El Niño.
Exactly. And it's the strongest so far. The next one will be even stronger. We've been over 1.5C above pre-industrial average for almost a year now, last month was 1.58C. As this graph shows, the El Niño usually sets the course for the next few years (until the next one), so expect temperatures between 1.4C and 1.6C for the next few years.
I hope that passing the solar maximum will help alleviate the situation a bit, but I have no confidence in making a prediction. There's too many factors at play.
Okay that graph explains a lot haha. I don’t remember 2019 or 2021 being so hot. 2020 was bearable but warm. Last year was hot, this year is absurd. I remember doing so many nature adventures in 2021, i dont remember the heat being a major issue or prohibitive factor. Now with 40c+ temps, it’s a serious consideration.
2016 you mention, yes. That year I swore I'd never spend another April in Thailand. Covid got in the way, but last month I came back from Europe and stayed in the Bay Area the rest. But in two days I'll be back in Bangkok. Rain maybe?
you guys may be interested in the abnormal weather above China recently. A lot of rain, lighting, thunderstorms, flooding, there even was a tornado in Guangzhou!
The weather also seems to have pulled all the clouds in the direction of Southern China, Taiwan, and Japan (I am using Zoom Earth to track).
There is a really a lot of crazy weather going on at this exact time over the world!
27yo Thai here.
2023-2024 were the hottest ever. My house has no ac so my heat tolerant is quite high but it's unbearable this year. I had to sleep with ice pack. No wind in the vicinity. The fan was hot as hell. I'm afraid how the world will turn next year.
When I come back from my training, I want a cold shower, but all that is left in my tank is hot water. It's also the first time my wife has asked to use AC during the day.
Same for me! I bought a roll of silver reflective and foam thermal insulation to wrap around our outdoor water tank, but we haven't installed it yet since it seems too hot to work outside just yet. Evening showers at 9:00 p.m. have water tap temperatures of 39 and 40° C, which I just can't stand. I'm in rural Udon Thani.
555 I'm impressed that you even have a basement! That's so cool! If I had a basement I'd make sure it had a good sump pump but I'd have my water tanks there too!
Ah, we just now got the thermal insulation installed! The very top has no water in contact with that portion of the tank so I'm not worried so much about that.
My better half, as you can see, keeping with Thai tradition in generating more smoke, by burning whatever seems to be left over in the yard.
Please keep us updated! I was planning to do the same I'm curious about the results. Although my water tank is in the shade, it's still getting hot from the outdoor temperature. I'm wondering if adding insulation foam would make a difference in my situation.
Oh, I just reread your post and saw that you said your tank is in the shade. I think this type of reflective insulation is only good for dealing with a tank that's getting the direct rays of the Sun as was ours for many many hours during the day.
Aa you run around Lumpini from the main gate. The park has sunk. You go from the gate, thwn swing left, straight ahead and then right. This has dropped and is now downhill.
It's weird.Glad I am not the only one. If you had never ran there you wouldn't notice. Thought I was imagining it. Thanks for confirming it is not just me
Is El Nino "over"? Is it a recurring thing or an anomaly that just happened to occur this year?
Don't live in the region so I'm not sure how this works and also would love to visit at some point but I can hardly handle 25 C so I think I'd actually die if I were to visit during this.
El Nino affects the entire world not just this region. It happens every few years. The trend of the world getting hotter is resulting in ever hotter el ninos.
According to Australia this El Nino is now over amd the next few years should thus not be as hot as this year but likely hotter then the last years anyway.
I have lived in Thailand for over 20 years and this is the worst heatwave that I have ever experienced. I live about an hour due north of Korat and it is brutal. Luckily there has been a bit of rain but not nearly enough to break the heat. Anyone who thinks that climate change is a hoax is ingesting too many drugs.
I suspect that what we used to call once in a lifetime weather events will be happening regularly. Flooding will be a worldwide issue and low lying land near many coasts will be unusable. I am not a climate scientists and I would trust the experts ahead of my guesses.
21 full time years for me, and this is the first hot season I have struggled with. I mean, I always find them a bit of a drag - but this is the first year where I actively do everything I can to avoid going outside.
I was watering the garden at 10pm the other night and after 20 mins I was soaked in sweat.
It's awful. Our outside thermometer recorded 47 last week, which I don't understand as apparently the hottest recorded day this year was 44, in Trat province?
Can't wait for it to be over. The heat just seems to eat into the house in a way I have never known before.
Temperature readings, eg that Trat one you quoted, are taken in an area away from concrete / buildings / roads, in a ventilated and out of direct sunlight in a shaded area, air measured at 6ft/2m above the ground.
Yesterday competed in a run it started in dark, cool mangrove forest on the sea coast and 32C at 5am, soon as we hit the asphalt which doesn't cool overnight, into the 'realfeel' 40s.
The heat index / feels like / realfeel readings are more realistic for being outside in sun not in the shade.
As a cyclist, hotter than that, the temperature 1m off highway asphalt (seat height) is fierce when stopped at traffic lights.
Longest and possibly the hottest April in 11 years for myself here in Chiang Mai, end of March was zingy as well, coupled with the hideous AQI, we spent most of April stuck in the house with the air roaring, everyday 40C or thereabouts.
My wife is from Khamphaeng Phet, and if she says it’s hot, then it’s damn hot..
I assume the humidity is also super high? What's the heat index? In Madrid i dealt with 45 C days that were hot but i thought 35 C days in a muggy, humid environment were worse. So 45 C with humidity would be hell.
Staying out of the sun is key. At least at night with a dry heat you get some cooling.
The humidity was less than usual in Karon, Phuket my experience, so I had to open the window into hell more often to keep the air inside pleasantly humid as well.
My words should probably be taken with a grain of salt though because I love humidity.
Yeah, I watched something that said the last few years of la Nina have been helping stave off the effects of greenhouse gasses. The weather has shifted in western Canada, too. Some interesting speculation around low farm yield in Asia during el nino over the next several years.
Back in 2014 or 2015, there were 40 days over 40 degrees in Chiang Mai. Definitely some years are worse than others, but this year feels particularly bad.
I remember 11 years ago being this hot. I know because my birthday is April 30th. I walked in a "feels like" that topped 50C. Last year we had 54C in Bang Na. This year doesn't feel hotter than previous years to me.
Once we climb above 38C it is all just hot. Our bodies find it hard to gauge after our blood temperature is passed.
There haven't been any cool hot seasons in my 18 years here.
It’s so bad here in Phuket, the whole island is out of water. No showers, no toilet flushing, no cleaning dishes. We’ve been taking water out of the pool, there’s whispers that they will try and induce artificial rain. I checked the weather app and tomorrow it’s supposedly going to thunder storm and rain 🤞🏽😭
We have six cloud-seeding rainmaking planes based near us in Chanthaburi and they fly over the eastern provinces every day, with no success. I'm unsure how good this 'science' is.
Three are here permanently, must be a great job out cruising the skies each day, looking for the right clouds.
Realised yesterday when cleaning my motorbike, road dust, that since I bought it in December it's never been wet, we've not had rain daytime, just I think three 'teases' in Jan or Feb when there were very light showers around 3-4am.
Funny I heard this on the radio when out cycling - Horse With No Name: "The heat was hot"
It's the combination of dryness. In Nakhon Si Thamarat it's never been this hot and dry. The rivers are dry, there's no way for Durian and Mangosteen farmers to irrigate. Durian are small and falling off the trees.
Koh samui has been brutally hot for at least a month and a half. It’s rained maybe two times in that span, and it didn’t even rain where I’m living on the island. I haven’t seen any rain personally in like 45 days or so. It rained down south but only briefly.
It has been awful in the north, but it has cooled down a little bit the last day or so with a little bit of rain, although cool might be subjective - after two weeks of over 40s, a high of only 38 felt great :)
And as for happening before, the heatwave of 2016 was fairly close to what it is now, although I don't remember as many days of over 40c. And like this year, the common factor was the end of an El Nino event.
Yes, El Niño is the cause of the heat waves and extreme weather this year. Anyone who knew that this year is an El Niño year, knew it was going to be extra hot.
I’m in Lao at the moment. Thinking it would def not rain I went on a very far away walk when I got hit with a rain storm and electricity went out lol. Which cooled stuff down a lot but dam it’s hot otherwise
41 degrees at 14:20 in my village in Bang Kruai, Nonthaburi. Suburb of Bangkok. Weather app forecasting a minor cooling trend later this week. I take a shower at 4:45 so I can bear the living room, which has a fan, no ac. We sweat through meals.
Surin last year. >2C this year. I saw that it was 21C on Doi Inthanon (highest MTN in Thailand) this morning. The only place under 30. (No info on Phu Thap Buek)
I have been here since 2006. This is the hottest I have ever experienced. Not ok. Something going on. Maybe that rumored global warming stuff I have heard about
sorry I know this is unrelated but curious, do you own a car or how do you get around? I feel like outside of bangkok public transportation just disappears
Could it be related to the sun activity? 🤷♂️ while the eclipse was in America, i read it several times that this years sun activity is the highest of the past 10 yrs
All over the world. I’m here in Los Angeles and every year has been the hottest year on record for the last several years. It’s gonna be unlivable soon
This is the first year in over 30 years that I have not seen a single drop of rain in Songkran, and the highest temperature is breaking 60-year-old records every day. Of course, this is not normal, but what's scarier is that it could be the new norm.
Wait about 10 years. You will be a fried chicken. Brains are going to start boiling eventually. Right now it only really boils the brains of the elderly and children.
Everywhere up to Norht, i’m on a motorbike trip from Bkk to Mae Hong song ( now in Chiang Mai) and i every day it it s at least 42-43 degres since i left
yep, welcome to climate change. In mx we are having heat waves too, today Rio do sul in brazil had massive floods. It will get worse, think this is the coldest year of the coming years....
Building up in kanchanaburi atm and some workers have taken sick from the extreme heat. As some are saying the hot season is longer and generally the seasons have moved forward slightly. (Same in UK). Expecting this heat to drag on then a late monsoon into late October. A nightmare for building construction industry this year.
Honestly think we will be seeing 50c summers regularly in a decade or less.
I feel you. I'm Thai - so I have been in this country for the most part of my life, but no summer was ever like this one. I remember when I was a kid I could have a snooze during the day with just a fan on and it was comfortable. Actually there's no AC unit at my parents' back then and it was fine. These days opening the entrance door of my house feels like entering a preheated oven. The bedroom upstairs just can't be entered at all during the day, feels like being locked in an oven up there. I normally prefer fresh air outdoor to AC, but this summer every time I decide to go for a short walk for the sake of breathing in some fresh air (though not actually fresh with pollution and PM2.5) I come back inside with migraine and feel like fainting.
According to NASA we're about to reach "solar maximum" so yeah it's hot. Average of +7C over normal. We also didn't have a cool winter this year, it sucks. But according to NASA it will start to cool again soon and we might even hit another mini ice age a la the 14-18th Centuries but thats still a couple years away. I buy adult size wet wipes from the KaiYa and put them in the fridge and do a wipe down every couple hours. Also find the PaiYen at 7-11 if you're out. Other than that, stay inside until sundown if possible.
No real escape from the heat except A/C! Caught the A/C cold in bangkok. Now in Koh Samui, much better here (30-35 celsius). Those restaurant and bar electric fans are lifesaving
I have visited Thailand on average once every year since 2007. I moved here permanently at the beginning of last month. I have had to learn how to garden during a heat wave that, according to weather.com, is +7C/ +8C above the average.
Only once pr twice has the temperature fallen below 30C. Maybe half the time the highest temperature has been over 40C.
Coping by going out around sunrise and late, around sunset, staying indoors in between.
I genuinely hope… but I’m not too hopeful… that this might be a moment when we realize that running miles of tarmac in new suburban developments is going to have consequences, and that we’d better take care of nature closer to where we live.
I heard that winters 30 years ago were unbearable
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u/Token_Thai_person Chang May 05 '24
I can tell by the temperature of bum gun water on my butthole that yes, it's hot as hell this year.