World's Water Cycle Becoming More Unpredictable, UN Warns
The UN agency said below-normal flows covered 36% of river basins as groundwater deficits and glacier losses deepened.
- 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.
38 Articles
38 Articles
World's water cycle becoming more unpredictable, UN warns
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 as groundwater levels in many parts of the world are in multi-year decline, it found. Overall, the WMO's annual State of Global Water Resources report showed that the Earth's freshwater storage -- the total amount of…
The world's rivers have lived one of the driest years in thirty years, according to the UN. Water cycle is more unpredictable and natural disasters are increasingThe water cycle has become "more irregular and unpredictable," UN warned Thursday, noting that rivers around the world had experienced in 2025 one of the driest years in more than three decades.The year 2025 is among the warmest ever recorded.It is now also among the driest of the last …
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Global Rivers Dry Up: A Decade-Long Trend Alarming the World | Science-Environment
In 2025, rivers worldwide suffered one of their driest years in decades, highlighting dwindling water storage across the globe. The World Meteorological Organization reported a decade-long decline in terrestrial water storage, posing serious threats to future water availability as changing water cycles lead to more unpredictable conditions.
The availability of freshwater is decreasing at an alarming rate in many parts of the world – including Europe The cause is climate change and man's rapidly increasing water use. This is according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
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