World's Water Cycle Becoming More Unpredictable, UN Warns
- On Thursday, the World Meteorological Organization reported that 2025 was one of the driest years for rivers worldwide in 35 years, reflecting declining water storage across Earth's surface and raising concerns about future global supplies.
- WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo warned that the planet is "depleting that savings account" of slow-moving water reserves like groundwater and glaciers, which have declined persistently for a decade since around 2014.
- Cumulative glacier losses reached roughly 1,400 gigatonnes between 2023 and 2025, equivalent to filling 560 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, while nearly two-thirds of monitored wells showed groundwater outside historical norms.
- Intense monsoon rainfall and tropical cyclones across South and South-East Asia contributed to as many as 3,600 deaths in 2025, as the current El Niño pattern—expected to be the strongest in four decades—exacerbates these disasters.
- "Water respects no borders," Saulo said, urging countries to adopt shared data and early warning systems, noting that a glacier disaster in one country can cause devastation in another, as seen in China and Nepal.
165 Articles
165 Articles
World’s water cycle more unpredictable
GENEVA — The planet’s water cycle is becoming increasingly erratic, swinging between too little and too much, the United Nations warned Thursday, with an unprecedented El Niño expected to exacerbate the long-term trend.Last year was among the driest for the world’s rivers in over three decades, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said in a report.In 2025 — one of the warmest years on record — glaciers also shrank across all regions, even …
One-third of the world's watersheds faced below-normal flows in 2025, one of the driest years of the last decades. The alert comes from the United Nations arm dedicated to weather and climate science and points to the loss of strategic water reserves.
Le Journal de Montreal
24 heuresThe water cycle has become "more irregular and unpredictable", according to the United Nations
Water cycle becomes more unpredictable, and El Niño must aggravate scenario, alerts UN Adobe Stock The water cycle is becoming increasingly unpredictable and the El Niño phenomenon must aggravate the long-term trend, warned on Thursday (17) the United Nations (UN). The year 2025 was one of the driest periods for rivers in three decades, highlighted the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in its annual report on the State of World Water Resou…
A World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report on the "State of World Water Resources" revealed that the water cycle has become more volatile and unpredictable, swinging between severe shortages and excessive abundance, noting that the past seven years have seen the lowest number of natural flows of rivers since 1991.
According to a report by the World Weather Organization (WMO), the world's water resources have become scarcer in recent years. The drain from rivers has declined, glaciers have shrunk and in many world regions the groundwater level is sinking, the WMO writes in its annual water report.
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