Greetings from the four corners of the world. No, we won’t square the circle notwithstanding Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, but we can try and make sense of the world one newsletter at a time! 

Today, we circumnavigate the globe and observe typhoons in Vietnam and the seas around it.

Two Cyclones Stir Up Asian Waters. Typhoon Talim and tropical storm Doksuri are heading toward Japan and Vietnam. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. Via Shutterstock.

The rising toll of typhoons: A year of devastation in Vietnam

It’s easy to feel distant from events unfolding across the globe, but storms, floods and rising seas have a way of reminding us how connected we all are. When one coastline is battered, supply chains, ecosystems and, inevitably, food prices are affected. The typhoons pounding Vietnam this year are more than local disasters — they are signals that global weather systems are dramatically changing because of human activity.

Vietnam’s coasts are used to storms, but this year has been catastrophic. One typhoon follows another, causing much suffering in already flood-prone regions. Like with all extreme weather on earth, the frequency and devastation of natural disasters in Vietnam are increasing as climate change accelerates. These disasters give just a taste of the destruction the next century may yet bring.

The latest storm to affect Vietnam, dubbed Typhoon Matmo, made landfall on Tuesday, October 7. While the typhoon did not directly hit the country, it did cause widespread flooding in the northern areas, including the capital, Hanoi. Vietnamese state media reports that more than 4,800 homes were damaged, killing at least eight people due to landslides, flooding and other complications that arose from the storm. Matmo is the 21st storm to be named in the 2025 Pacific typhoon season.

Sources:

Torrential rains cause deadly flooding in northern Vietnam | APNews

Hanoi flooded again as storm season brings more rain to Vietnam’s north | Reuters

Typhoon Matmo unleashes extreme rainfall and record river crests in northern Vietnam | The Watchers

On top of that, Typhoon Bualoi made landfall a week prior. It was another devastating storm that killed 50 people. No less than 100,000 military personnel helped roughly 250,000 people evacuate their homes to escape the storm onslaught. And just the week before Bualoi, Typhoon Ragasa also hit Vietnam after passing through the Philippines, Taiwan and Mainland China. In fact, this latest storm, Typhoon Matmo, is the 11th to hit the country this year. The Vietnamese government is working hard to aid its citizens through financial and civil support.

Sources:

Bualoi: At least 11 dead as typhoon sweeps Vietnam | BBC

Hundreds of thousands evacuate as Vietnam braces for Typhoon Bualoi | Weather News | Al Jazeera

Ragasa weakens but brings heavy rain and flood risk to northern Vietnam | AP News

Typhoon Bualoi death toll in Vietnam tops 50 | National | khq.com

Heavy storms in this region of the world are to be expected at this time of year. Vietnam is a country bordering the eastern Pacific Ocean, and thus is subject to the weather patterns at play on the ocean for all of its recorded history. Vietnam usually faces five to six typhoons a year, but 2025 has already brought eleven — and the season is far from over.

Tropical cyclones in Vietnam – Wikipedia

Typhoon and Tropical Cyclone Seasons in Vietnam | U.S. Embassy & Consulate in Vietnam

Impacts of Typhoons on the Vietnamese Coastline: A Case Study of Hai Hau Beach and Ly Hoa Beach | ScienceDirect

Every storm costs millions of dollars in damage and erodes the mangrove forests that once protected the coast. Development pressures, warmer seas and heavier rainfall are turning a seasonal challenge into a chronic threat. And in every article you read about storms these days, you can always count on a little section somewhere describing a well-known phenomenon we are all familiar with: climate change.

Hoi An, Vietnam, October 2022. A man rowing a boat to take a tourist group out from Hoi — an ancient city — during a flood. Via Shutterstock

Source:

Viet Nam’s mangrove forests under siege | Mekong Eye

It can be easy to ignore those little sections in innumerable articles. We have been seeing them for decades by now, and very few articles bother to expand much upon them. People know that more extreme weather is the result of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere, so there is little point in lingering on the subject.

But at the risk of being the wagging finger, we should pay more attention to those bits and pieces in each article and news segment. It was only a few years ago that scientists warned the world had until 2030 to keep temperature rises under 1.5°C — or face an unprecedented catastrophe on a level the human race has never known. Now reports show that 2024 has already hit that dreaded benchmark.

Source:

Global Warming of 1.5°C | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

WMO confirms 2024 as warmest year on record at about 1.55°C above pre-industrial level | WMO

The need for global cooperation

The storms in Vietnam, like all reports on extreme weather these days, are one piece of a much larger puzzle. Vietnam is, geographically, a relatively small strip of land surrounded by other countries and island nations. When a storm hits Vietnam, it has likely already hit several other countries, such as the Philippines and China, and is on its way to hit more nations, such as Cambodia and Thailand. Every typhoon that strikes Vietnam has likely crossed the Philippines or southern China first. Yet disaster coordination across borders remains limited, showing how fragile regional cooperation still is in the face of shared climate risks.

What affects one country affects the countries around it. Global patterns of cause and effect, such as modern trade and commerce, or weather and CO2 distribution, affect every country. The toll of blood and treasure that natural disasters are extracting from Vietnam today is just a fraction of what is going on worldwide and what is to come.

Sources:

Bualoi: At least 11 dead as typhoon sweeps Vietnam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Report_on_Global_Warming_of_1.5_%C2%B0C 

A world at war with itself is ill-equipped to address climate change, which demands unity. Dealing with increasingly catastrophic natural disasters and tackling climate change requires a level of global cooperation that is hard to imagine. Most of the news outlets covering Vietnam are not mentioning climate change, but we simply cannot run away from an existential issue staring us in the eye.