World's Water Cycle Becoming More Unpredictable, UN Warns
The report says nearly two-thirds of monitored wells were outside normal ranges in 2025, underscoring rising drought and flood risks.
- 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.
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The World Weather Organization warns: rivers, glaciers and groundwater have been shrinking for a decade. What this means for us.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has declared that 2025 was one of the driest years in decades for rivers around the world. It further highlighted the decline in water reserves on Earth’s surface and raised concerns about future water sufficiency. “The Earth’s water reserves – lakes, vegetation, ice, snow – have been declining for a decade,” according to the WMO’s report on the state of global water resources. “We are depleting our sa…
Global water report reveals drying rivers and erratic swings between too little and too much
Rivers across the globe in 2025 had one of the driest years in more than three decades, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It shows a continuation of the long-term decline in Earth's freshwater storage and glacier retreat—trends with serious implications for people and economies in the future.
'We Are Spending Our Reserves,' WMO Chief Warns as UN Drops Global Water Report
"The buffers that have historically protected water security—snow, ice, groundwater—are eroding in many regions on a timescale of years, not overnight," the agency leader said, stressing "a sense of urgency, not panic."
According to a report by the World Weather Organization (WMO), water resources have continued to decline. The reasons for man-made climate change, the increasing demand for water and natural fluctuations, was reported by the United Nations Special Organization in Geneva.
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