The record heat and extreme weather seen across East Asia this summer have prompted warnings that climate change will be an increasing challenge for military planners focused on potential flashpoints such as the Taiwan Strait.
Besides the risks to both troops and equipment, typhoons and other storms could also damage critical infrastructure and disrupt training, as well as divert personnel and resources towards emergency relief.
Although militaries may be able to adapt in peacetime, they may have less flexibility in times of war, where extreme weather could have a direct impact on combat operations.
Armed forces are adapting to the challenge in different ways.
For example, Japan and the United States have formally incorporated climate risk into their assessments of force readiness, bases, equipment and supply chains, while Taiwan has folded climate-related disasters into its mobilisation and resilience planning.
The Philippines is expanding facilities under its defence cooperation agreement with the US, some of which are specifically designed to strengthen its disaster response and ability to carry out humanitarian relief operations.
Meanwhile, mainland China’s public response has focused heavily on tactical adaptation.
This summer, mainland Chinese forces continued testing how extreme heat affected their operations.
For example, in the southern region of Guangxi, a People’s Armed Police unit pushed drones to their limits in high temperatures, according to China Military Online.
Meanwhile, a People’s Liberation Army Air Force unit analysed how personnel and equipment performed in high temperatures and explored specialised maintenance procedures for extreme conditions.
Environmental factors are already imposing real-world trade-offs.
Earlier this month, Typhoon Dolphin hit Okinawa at a time when US forces at Kadena Air Base were carrying out a readiness exercise.
The approaching typhoon, which prompted the evacuation of more than a million people in eastern China, meant personnel had to prepare helicopters and tankers for the storm while simultaneously supporting the readiness exercise.
The previous month, a series of typhoons struck mainland China, causing widespread flooding across vast swathes of the country that prompted the PLA to send personnel, vehicles and other equipment to help with relief efforts.
Typhoons have also repeatedly disrupted Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang exercises. They forced parts of the 2023 and 2024 drill to be cancelled or halted prematurely, while Typhoon Danas diverted some forces towards disaster recovery at the start of the 2025 edition.
Extreme conditions also have a direct impact on both servicemen and women and the uncrewed systems that play an increasingly important role in modern warfare.
The US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine has found that as well as having a physical impact, heat stress can also impair cognitive functions such as attention and memory.
Meanwhile, Michael Bosack, director of the Parley Policy Institute, said planners would have to account for different conditions when deciding what equipment to use.
“For example, the cheap componentry and light weight of many smaller variants of unmanned systems make them susceptible to extreme temperatures and high winds,” Bosack said.
Storms can also sharply curtail military activity. When Typhoon Gaemi struck Taiwan in July 2024, the PLA aerial activity around the island fell from 22 aircraft in the July 2023-24 period to zero for three consecutive 24-hour periods, before flights resumed.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China and has never renounced the use of force to reunite it with the mainland.
Most countries, including the US, Philippines and Japan, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but many are opposed to any attempt to take it by force.
The impact of extreme weather on military operations would be amplified in wartime, when commanders may not be able to wait for conditions to improve.
Several analysts highlighted the ways in which it could affect any large-scale assault on Taiwan, where tensions with the mainland have been steadily rising.
In 2020, a peer-reviewed Chinese study found statistically significant long-term increases in wind speeds and significant wave heights in the Taiwan Strait, based on simulations covering 1988 to 2017.
“While improvements in PLA capabilities may have reduced some of these seasonal constraints, they have not eliminated the underlying physical challenges,” said Christopher Sharman, director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College, speaking in a personal capacity.
PLA amphibious forces, he added, were working to improve their ability to operate in poor weather, at night and under other degraded conditions.
Sherri Goodman, secretary general of the International Military Council on Climate and Security, pointed to modernised amphibious brigades, larger amphibious ships, civilian vessels and improvements in transport and logistics as examples of how Chinese capabilities had evolved.
But Goodman, a former US deputy undersecretary of defence for environmental security, also warned that while better capability could widen a weather window, “it does not eliminate the window”.
K. Tristan Tang, a non-resident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research, said extreme weather would affect forces on both sides but the impact would probably be greater on the PLA because it would have to project and sustain forces across the strait.
“Severe weather would not necessarily make those operations impossible, but it could reduce their effectiveness and make coordination considerably more difficult,” Tang said.
For Goodman, the scale of the operation presents a further problem. Moving a large force would require not only troops and vehicles but also a continuing flow of fuel, ammunition and other supplies across contested waters and onto beaches or through ports.
“An invasion is not won by getting the first troops ashore. It is won by sustaining them,” she said.
James Holmes, a professor at the US Naval War College, argued that harsher conditions could favour Taiwan as the tactical defender, provided its own military remained operational.
“Anything that afflicts the aggressor only enhances that advantage,” he said.
Taiwan would face vulnerabilities of its own. Tang said that damage to the island’s ports or airfields could seriously hamper its operations, although it could also deny the PLA infrastructure it might hope to use after securing a foothold.
Goodman offered a broader qualification, arguing that the effects would depend on where vulnerabilities emerged across the different forces involved and their ability to recover.
“Climate change does not automatically favour one side. It imposes costs and creates vulnerabilities across the battlespace,” she said.
“The important question is where those vulnerabilities occur, how concentrated they are and how quickly each side can recover from them.”
That shifts the question from exposure alone to how well militaries can absorb disruption. Measures such as redundancy, dispersal, hardened infrastructure, rapid repair and alternative logistics routes could help forces continue operating when parts of their networks are damaged.
“Resilience is not simply disaster preparedness. It is warfighting capacity,” Goodman said.
“The military that can fight through disruption – and recover fastest from it – will have an advantage.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
