As climate change continues to cause rising temperatures that can lead to severe drought, rivers across the planet are suffering.
What's happening?
As Reuters reported in early October, the U.N. weather agency found that record heat in 2023 caused river flows around the world to fall to all-time lows, endangering water supplies that have already been dwindling due to rising demand.
The State of Global Water Resources used data going back 33 years to determine that the Mississippi and Amazon River basins reached record lows last year following decreasing river flows in large parts of North, Central and South America because of prolonged drought. The Ganges and Mekong river basins in Southeast Asia also experienced below-average conditions, joining a slew of catchment areas around the world that have shown abnormal water levels and increasing concerns about diminishing water availability.
"Water is becoming the most telling indicator of our time of climate's distress and yet, as a global society, we are not taking action to protect these reserves," World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said at a Geneva press briefing, per Reuters.
Why is this important?
Reduced water levels can have significant impacts on the environment and local communities. Marine life can suffer as animals are forcibly displaced from their habitats when drought causes those areas to dry up.
This issue further illustrates how the ongoing climate crisis has led to increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather conditions.
The WMO also reported the rising temperatures have resulted in the largest mass losses for the world's glaciers in 50 years, with 600 gigatonnes of water being lost amid the extreme melting period. While these instances led to high river flows in Europe and Scandinavia, WMO Director of Hydrology Stefan Uhlenbrook warned those levels will likely fall significantly in the coming years.
"When the glacier is gone in a few more decades. It will be very dramatic," Uhlenbrook said during the Geneva press briefing, per Reuters.
What's being done about this?
According to Reuters, Saulo "warned that water cycles were becoming more erratic due to climate change" and adamantly suggested the need for increased hydrological monitoring to help track and respond to these dramatic shifts in weather patterns.
Still, Uhlenbrook indicated that in areas where heat records are being recorded, water scarcity is all but an inevitability.
"Very likely this hot, dry weather continues to translate to low river flow," Uhlenbrook said, per Reuters.
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