Published on: 2026-09-17
Source: United Nations – United Nations –
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September 17, 2026 Climate and Environment
In 2025, rivers around the world experienced one of the driest periods in more than three decades, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report indicates a continued long-term decline in terrestrial freshwater reserves and glacier retreat—trends that may have serious consequences for people and the economy in the future.
According to the WMO report “State of Global Water Resources,” the water cycle is becoming increasingly unstable and unpredictable, fluctuating between shortage and surplus of resources.
Over the past seven years, the number of rivers with “normal” flow has been the lowest since 1991.
Supplies are running out
Precipitation, river runoff, and soil moisture respond quickly to weather conditions – within days or weeks. Other components of the water cycle, such as groundwater, glaciers, and seasonal snow cover, change more slowly, accumulating or depleting over seasons, decades, and longer periods.
“Traditionally, these slowly changing reserves have served as a kind of savings account for the planet – a buffer that allows us to survive unfavorable years, so that a single drought or dry season does not directly lead to a water crisis,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.
“We are depleting this savings account. Since 2014–2016, there has been a trend of decreasing water reserves on land—a consistent signal that has persisted for a decade,” Saulo added.
For the fourth consecutive year, the mass of ice has decreased in all major glaciated regions of the Earth. Groundwater shows a similar pattern: compared to 2024, the water balance in the past has shifted even more toward deficit.
According to the head of the WMO, the world is witnessing an increasing number of water-related disasters, and the strengthening of the El Niño phenomenon will raise the risk of droughts in some areas and floods in others.
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Alarming trends
The year 2025 became one of the driest for river runoff worldwide in 35 years: runoff was below normal in 36 percent of the world’s river basin areas. For the seventh consecutive year, the number of river basins with “normal” conditions remained below average: it ranged from 34 to 38 percent compared to 46 percent for the period 1991–2020.
Terrestrial water storage – the total amount of water contained in groundwater, lakes and rivers, soil, vegetation, ice, and snow – has been decreasing since the mid-2010s.
In 2025, terrestrial water reserves were below normal in several regions, including Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and some areas of the Russian Federation.
Loss of glaciers
Last year marked the fourth consecutive year of massive glacier loss in all regions. This creates short-term risks, including floods, and long-term threats to water security. During the period 2023–2025, glaciers lost mass every year, with a total global glacier mass loss of 1400 gigatons of water. This approximately corresponds to the volume of water needed to fill 560 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, or about one-third of the annual volume of freshwater withdrawals.
In 2025, the snow cover level in Europe was below normal, while significant regional differences were observed in the Russian Federation and North America.
In 2025, glaciers in Central Asia, South and West Asia, the Russian Arctic, Iceland, western Canada, and the USA lost so much mass that the annual figure was among the three worst ever recorded.
Some regions dominated by small glaciers, including the Caucasus, Western Canada and the USA, as well as Central Europe, may have already reached the “peak water”—the threshold at which streamflow volume resulting from glacier melt reaches its maximum.
Extreme phenomena
In each of the last five years, national meteorological and hydrological services around the world have reported record floods and droughts. In some areas, there was almost no time to recover between one extreme event and the next.
According to the report, Asia and Africa together account for at least half of all recorded extreme water-related events and more than 80 percent of the recorded deaths resulting from such events over the past five years.
“Water knows no borders. The water balance of a river basin depends on what is happening in another country. The retreat of a glacier in one country changes the availability of water for the population living hundreds of kilometers downstream. That is precisely why we need joint data, common standards, and early warning systems – this is exactly why the WMO exists,” Saulo emphasized.
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