{ WMO REPORT } ‘Erratic water cycle exposing people to deluge and drought’

The water cycle has become erratic and extreme, exposing people to deluge and drought, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) flagged on Thursday.

- Jayashree Nandi

The report highlights the cascading impacts of too much or too little water on economies and society. The State of Global Water Resources report finds that only about one-third of the global river basins had “normal” conditions in 2024. The rest were either above or below normalthe sixth consecutive year of such imbalance.

In India, 385 deaths were reported, caused by extreme rainfall on July 30 2024 in Kerala, triggering extreme landslides. River basins such as the Godavari, Krishna, Ganges, and parts of the upstream Indus showed above-normal discharge conditions.

Last year was the third consecutive year on record where there was widespread ice loss across all glaciated regions: with 450 Gt lost - the equivalent of a huge block of ice 7 kilometers tall, 7 km wide, and 7 km deep, or enough water to fill 180 million Olympic swimming pools, WMO has estimated.

That much meltwater adds about 1.2 millimetres to global sea level in a single year, contributing to flooding risk for hundreds of millions of people living in coastal zones.