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.
56 Articles
56 Articles
2025 was one of the driest years in decades for rivers around the world, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said today. The event reflects the decline in water reserves on Earth's surface and raises concerns about future water availability. 'We are depleting our savings account' The Earth's water reservoirs - lakes, vegetation, ice, snow - have been declining for a decade, according to the WMO's report on the state of global water resou…
Rainfall is becoming increasingly unevenly and irregularly distributed across the globe. Groundwater and glaciers, which are important to humans, are at risk.
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Jang Jae-eun = It has been diagnosed that rivers around the world are drying up and the Earth's freshwater reserves are becoming depleted.
Tagesschau
cedarnews.netMelting glaciers, less water in rivers: Water reserves have been dwindling for years, warns the World Weather Organization. This also lost the buffer for drought years - with consequences for the population and the economy.
Rivers lead less water, glaciers melt, wells disappear: the WMO shows a gloomy picture of global water reserves. Central and Eastern Europe in particular suffer from declining groundwater levels. In addition, a particularly strong El Niño is announced for the coming year.
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…
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