The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that floods, storms, and other water-related disasters are set to worsen as global heating accelerates.
According to the agency, the world’s water resources face mounting pressure from climate change, with emergencies involving the life-sustaining resource increasingly devastating lives and livelihoods worldwide.
“Water-related hazards continue to cause major devastation this year,” WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said on Thursday. “The latest examples are the devastating monsoon flooding in Pakistan, floods in South Sudan and the deadly flash floods in the Indonesian island of Bali. Unfortunately, we see no end to this trend.”
The WMO chief highlighted alarming glacial losses, noting that 2024 marked the third consecutive year of widespread retreat across all regions. Glaciers lost 450 gigatonnes of ice—equivalent to a seven-kilometre block of ice or around 180 million Olympic swimming pools. This melt added roughly 1.2 millimetres to global sea levels, further endangering coastal communities.
The report also underscored the urgent need for improved monitoring of streamflow, groundwater, soil moisture and water quality, much of which remains poorly tracked. Rising air temperatures are compounding the situation, allowing the atmosphere to hold more water and fueling heavier, more destructive rainfall.
The warnings came alongside the release of a new WMO report on the state of the world’s waterways, snow and ice. The study found that 2024 was the hottest year in 175 years of observation, with global average surface temperatures 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels.
One of the year’s starkest examples was Storm Boris, which struck central and eastern Europe in September, triggering catastrophic flash floods and displacing tens of thousands. Rivers in the Czech Republic reached levels that should statistically only occur once in a century.
“A ‘century event’ happened,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, Director of the WMO’s Hydrology, Water and Cryosphere Division. “Unfortunately, statistics show these extreme events might become even more frequent.”
The WMO findings also confirmed wetter-than-normal conditions across central-western Africa, Lake Victoria, Kazakhstan, southern Russia, central Europe, Pakistan, northern India, southern Iran and northeastern China in 2024.
One of the report’s key conclusions is that disruptions to the water cycle in one part of the world have cascading effects elsewhere. The rapid melting of glaciers, in particular, remains a major global concern due to the existential threat it poses to downstream and coastal communities.