Global Water Cycle Disrupted in 2024, Reveals Report

With over 8,700 deaths, 40 million people displaced, and economic losses exceeding $550 billion, climate change significantly disrupted the global water cycle last year, according to the 2024 Global Water Monitor Report.

- USHA PERI @ Vizag

The report detailed how rising temperatures, extreme weather patterns, and climate-induced phenomena caused widespread devastation across continents. The report identified flash floods, river floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, and landslides as the most damaging water-related disasters of 2024. Events such as flooding in Afghanistan-Pakistan, severe flooding in East Africa, Rio Grande do Sul floods in Brazil, and the Amazon basin's drought and bushfires were directly attributed to climate change impacts.

It included Wayanad's catastrophic landslides triggered by relentless monsoon rains between July 29 and 30. Heavy rainfall of up to 409 mm in 24 hours caused massive slope collapses in the fragile Western Ghats. It resulted in over 375 fatalities, 250 people reported missing, and the displacement of more than 10,000 residents.