Extreme heat in Kathmandu: plans, cycles and who is at work

A valley city warming fast, below the Himalayan ice that feeds South Asia’s rivers. Heat plan: no published city heat plan found.

Heat type: Milder heat at altitude, hottest before the monsoon. Dry heat and humid heat, explained.

Heat action plan: No published city heat plan found

No city heat action plan found. Nepal adopted a national plan of action on heat waves in 2024, and Nepalgunj, in the plains, wrote the country’s first local heat action plan in 2023.

Sources: Onlinekhabar, 2025 · Nepalgunj Heat Action Plan, 2023

Heat today

Live readings and the week’s forecast are on the interactive map. Official warnings: Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. How much climate change shaped today’s heat: Climate Shift Index map, Climate Central.

Vicious cycles the evidence ties to Kathmandu

The melting-ice loop

The Hindu Kush Himalaya’s glaciers lost ice 65% faster in the 2010s, and could lose 30–50% of their volume by 2100. Source: ICIMOD, 2023

Heat melts ice. Darker ground and water absorb more sunlight, and the melting speeds up. Follow it on the map.

The medical-debt trap

In five cities in Nepal and Bangladesh, heat cut incomes and pushed some households towards high-interest loans. Source: American Red Cross, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, Nepal Red Cross Society and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, 2026

Treatment costs push families into debt. Debt removes any option to rest, and working through the heat brings more illness. Follow it on the map.

Who heat hits hardest here

• Women whose livelihoods are held back by unequal access
• Older people

Already at work here

• National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, Nepal: Issued Nepal’s first federal heat plan in 2024.
• Nepal Red Cross Society: Published the Dhangadhi Heat Action Plan in 2025 with the Climate Centre, setting out when and where to act before and during heatwave days in a city that passes 40 °C every year.
• Tewa, Nepal Women’s Fund: Makes small grants to grassroots women’s groups in Nepal; one won municipal funding for irrigation after training on climate budgets. Heat-specific funding is not confirmed.
• Nepal Rastra Bank: Sets environmental and social risk rules for banks (2018), and since October 2024 a green finance taxonomy that sorts lending into green, amber and red.
• Practical Action: Connects heat risk intelligence, local action, practical technology, institutions and finance, following a Sense → Decide → Act → Sustain logic. In Nepal, Dhangadhi’s heat action plan links temperature, humidity and health data, hotspot mapping and community views to thresholds and set municipal responses. In Bangladesh, heat is being built into early warning and livelihood work. A partner in the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance.

Listing does not imply partnership, affiliation or endorsement.

The national picture

Plans and law, warnings, rules for heat at work, cooling, money and other cities in Nepal: the Nepal country snapshot.