As the dry season approaches in the region, the ASEAN Specialized Meteorological Centre ( ASMC) issued a” Level 1″ alert on Thursday ( Jan 2 ), warning of hotspots and haze in the region.
The center claimed in a press release that the east monsoon’s “established” will result in clean conditions covering the majority of the Mekong sub-region.
The hub and cloud situation over the sub-region may get worse in the coming months due to the season’s persistent dry spells, it added.
The provincial weather center even observed a steady rise in the sub-region’s hotspot count since mid-December. It recorded a leap in the number of areas between Dec 31 and Jan 1, from 164 areas to 335 both.
Although it found some localized smoke plumes or fog in parts of Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos, it claimed that there hasn’t been any transnational smoke haze thus far.
The Mekong sub-region even includes Myanmar, Vietnam and parts of China.
At the start of 2025, ASMC added that it anticipates natural or short-lived La Nina conditions, which may cause wetter-than-average conditions in some pieces of Southeast Asia.
” However, its results on snowfall may not be pronounced over the Mekong sub-region , and there may still be a danger of expanded hub activities and intergovernmental smoke , cloud in the sub-region”, it said.