WMO highlights increasingly erratic global water cycle

By the Climate Centre

The annual survey of water resources from the World Meteorological Organization says the global “water cycle has become increasingly erratic and extreme, swinging between deluge and drought”.

The detailed assessment of the availability of freshwater, including streams and rivers, reservoirs, lakes, groundwater, soil moisture, snow and ice “highlights the cascading impacts of too much or too little water on economies and society,” a WMO press release from Geneva said today.

Among its key messages are findings that only one third of river basins had normal conditions in 2024 – either too much or too little water, “reflecting the increasingly erratic hydrological cycle” – while all glacier regions report losses due to melt for third straight year.

The Amazon Basin and other parts of South America as well as southern Africa were gripped by severe drought last year, whilst there were wetter-than-normal conditions in most of the rest of the African continent and parts of Asia and Central Europe. 

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said today that “the world’s water resources are under growing pressure and – at the same time – more extreme water-related hazards are having an increasing impact on lives and livelihoods.

“Reliable, science-based information is more important than ever before because we cannot manage what we do not measure.” 

The State of Global Water Resources 2024 report also stresses “the critical need for improved monitoring and data sharing”.

A safe water point in Garoua 3, a small community near the Benue river in northern Cameroon, where many lives have been lost to cholera. Supported by the IFRC’s Community Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness Programme, local Red Cross volunteers engaged in public health education about the dangers of drinking contaminated water, and lobbied local authorities to install clean water sources and concrete latrines. (Photo: Cameroon Red Cross via IFRC)