The world's rivers faced the driest year in three decades in 2023, the UN agency says
Source: ABC News/AP
October 7, 2024, 4:39 AM
GENEVA -- The U.N. weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world's 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 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.
“Water 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," said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, releasing the report on Monday.
She said rising temperatures had in part led the hydrological cycle to become “more erratic and unpredictable” in ways that can produce “either too much or too little water” through both droughts and floods. 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 — and that figure is expected to rise to 5 billion by 2050.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/worlds-rivers-faced-driest-year-decades-2023-weather-114554393
Link to WMO PRESS RELEASE - WMO report highlights growing shortfalls and stress in global water resources
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