Climate change is spurring increasingly erratic and extreme swings between deluge and drought across the world, the United Nations warned on Thursday.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization said in a report that the world’s water cycle was becoming ever more unpredictable, with shrinking glaciers, droughts, unbalanced river basins and severe floods wreaking havoc.
“The world’s water resources are under growing pressure and — at the same time — more extreme water-related hazards are having an increasing impact on lives and livelihoods,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo cautioned in a statement released with the annual State of Global Water Resources report.
Last year was the hottest on record, leading to prolonged droughts in northern parts of South America, the Amazon Basin and southern Africa.
Parts of central Africa Europe and Asia, meanwhile, were dealing with wetter weather than usual, being hit with devastating floods or deadly storms, the report pointed out.
