GENEVA, 7 Oct (AP) \u2014 The U.N. weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world\u2019s rivers, as the record-hot year underpinned a drying up of water flows and contributed to prolonged droughts in some places.<\/p>\n
The World Meteorological Organization also says glaciers that feed rivers in many countries suffered the largest loss of mass in the last five decades, warning that ice melt can threaten long-term water security for millions of people globally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWater is the canary in the coalmine of climate change. We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies,\u201d said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, releasing the report on Monday.<\/p>\n
She said rising temperatures had in part led the hydrological cycle to become \u201cmore erratic and unpredictable\u201d in ways that can produce \u201ceither too much or too little water\u201d through both droughts and floods.<\/p>\n
The \u201cState of Global Water Resources 2023\u201d report covers rivers and also lakes, reservoirs, groundwater, soil moisture, terrestrial water storage, snow cover and glaciers, and the evaporation of water from land and plants.<\/p>\n
The weather agency, citing figures from UN Water, says some 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water for at least one month a year \u2014 and that figure is expected to rise to 5 billion by 2050. WMO says 70% of all the water that humans draw from the hydrological systems goes into agriculture.<\/p>\n
\nThe world faced the hottest year on record in 2023, and the summer of this year was also the hottest summer ever \u2014 raising warning signs for a possible new annual record in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the (last) 33 years of data, we had never such a large area around the world which was under such dry conditions,\u201d said Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of hydrology, water and cryosphere at WMO.<\/p>\n
The report said the southern United States, Central America and South American countries Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay faced widespread drought conditions and \u201cthe lowest water levels ever observed in Amazon and in Lake Titicaca,\u201d on the border between Peru and Bolivia.<\/p>\n
The Mississippi River basin also experienced record-low water levels, the report said. WMO said half of the world faced dry river flow conditions last year.<\/p>\n
The data for 2024 isn\u2019t in yet, but Uhlenbrook said the extremely hot summer is \u201cvery likely\u201d to translate into low river flows this year, and \u201cin many parts of the world, we expect more water scarcity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Low-water conditions have had an impact on river navigation in places like Brazil and a food crisis in Zimbabwe and other parts of southern Africa this year.<\/p>\n
WMO called for improvements in data collection and sharing to help clear up the real picture for water resources and help countries and communities take action in response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GENEVA, 7 Oct (AP) \u2014 The U.N. weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world\u2019s rivers, as the record-hot year underpinned a drying up of water flows and contributed to prolonged droughts in some places. The World Meteorological Organization also says glaciers that feed rivers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-250041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}