Droughts spread across the planet

Large areas of the planet have experienced droughts beyond normal and some 3.5 billion people have inadequate access to water at least once a month, indicated the most recent report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which attributed this negative climate change process.

Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General, said that "the impacts of climate change are often felt across the water with more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal rainfall and accelerated melting of glaciers."

“All of this has cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives,” Taalas added.

The report on "The state of world water resources" highlights that among the unusually dry areas is the area of ​​the Río de la Plata in South America, where persistent drought has affected the region since 2019.

In Africa, large rivers such as the Niger, Volta, Nile, and Congo had below-average flow in 2021. The same trend was observed for rivers in parts of Russia, western Siberia, and central Asia.

By contrast, there were above-normal river volumes in some basins in North America, the northern Amazon, and South Africa, as well as in the Amur River basin of China and northern India.

Aside from fluvial flow variations, global terrestrial water storage was classified as below normal on the west coast of the United States, in central South America and Patagonia, in North Africa and Madagascar, in Central Asia and the Middle East, in Pakistan and in northern India.

It was higher than normal in central Africa, northern South America -specifically the Amazon basin- and northern China.

“The impacts of climate change are often felt across the water with more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal precipitation, and accelerated melting of glaciers. All this has cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives”.

Petteri Taalas

"In general, the negative trends are stronger than the positive ones," warned the WMO, the United Nations weather, climate and water agency, based in this Swiss city.

He recalled that "changes in the water resources of the cryosphere affect food security, human health, the integrity and maintenance of ecosystems, with important repercussions for economic and social development."

The cryosphere, that is to say, the glaciers, the snow cover, the polar ice caps and, when it exists, the permafrost (layer of the permanently frozen ground), is the largest natural reserve of fresh water in the world.

Their changes sometimes cause river flooding and flash floods due to overflows from glacial lakes.

With rising temperatures, annual runoff from glaciers typically increases at first, until a tipping point, often called a "peak water," is reached, after which runoff decreases.

With excessive droughts and floods, 3.6 billion of the planet's 8,000 people have inadequate access to water for at least one month of the year, and it is feared that this number will rise to 5 billion by 2050.

“And yet, changes in the distribution, quantity and quality of freshwater resources are not sufficiently known,” Taalas observed.

The WMO report "seeks to fill that knowledge gap and provide a concise picture of water availability in different parts of the world," he added.

WMO hopes that these studies will inform climate adaptation and mitigation investments, as well as the United Nations campaign to provide universal access within the next five years to early warnings of hazards such as floods and droughts.

Between 2001 and 2018, “a staggering 74% of all-natural disasters were related to water,” said UN-Water, the mechanism on the matter made up of some 20 United Nations agencies and associated entities.

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