Weathering the storm: impacts of extreme climate events on food security in Southeast Asia and pathways to resilience

Southeast Asia is among the world’s most climate-exposed regions. Recurrent heatwaves, droughts, and floods shorten or disrupt crop growing seasons, disrupt harvests and transport, and intensify price volatility in food systems. We analyzed spatiotemporal trends in food security and extreme climate factors during 2003–2022. Random forest and GeoDetector models were employed to quantify predictive power, Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) data (SSP1-2.6 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios) were used to project food security, and SHAP was applied to assign factor contributions in future time periods. Results were as follows: (i) during 2003–2022, food security generally improved across the region, except in Myanmar, although cross-country disparities widened, while warm and precipitation extremes increased and cold extremes decreased; (ii) the influence of extreme climate factors varied temporally and spatially, and modelling their joint effects was associated with prdictive power; and (iii) across scenarios and periods, diurnal temperature range appeared to be the dominant driver, although country groups differed in sensitivity to specific extremes. These findings highlight the urgency of building practical adaptation pathways to confront climate change and achieve sustainable development goals.