Fresh water is vital for life. On average, a human being cannot survive more than three days without it. Water is essential for the production of our food, virtually all of our goods and services and for the environment. The world now faces increasing challenges posed by water stress, floods and droughts and lack of access to clean supplies. There is an urgent need to improve forecasting, monitoring and management of water supplies and to tackle the problem of too much, too little or too polluted water.
We cannot manage what we do not measure. Water data collection and sharing underpin hydrological monitoring and forecasting and flood and drought early warning services.
Effective flood and drought policies can be implemented only with data and models for assessing the frequency and magnitude of extreme events. Progress towards goals such as improving water use efficiency cannot be calculated without monitoring surface water, groundwater and reservoirs.
What is the quantity, quality and distribution of water resources in our country, river basin and sub-catchment? What is the potential for water-related development? Can the available resource meet actual and foreseeable demands including the needs of ecosystems?
How should we plan, design and operate water projects, such as those involving hydraulic construction, such as hydroelectric facilities, navigation, irrigation and drainage schemes, domestic and industrial water supply, water sanitation, and river restoration?
How do our water resource management practices impact the environment, economy and society? How can we plan sound management strategies?
How can we protect people, property and ecosystems from water-related hazards, particularly floods, droughts and pollutants?
How can we allocate water among competing uses, both within the country and across borders?
How can we meet regulatory requirements?
How can we develop evidence-based climate change adaptation and mitigation policies? How can we ensure the sustainable use of our water resources?
WMO Action
WMO has assumed the direction of the World Water Data Initiative, which was implemented under the leadership of the Australian government and supports countries in water-related policy development to improve access to and use of water data by decision-makers.
WMO HydroHub - The Global Hydrometry Support Facility makes the portfolio of expertise among WMO Members – from science to technology to services – available to support access to end-users of hydrometeorological data and services from various economic sectors as tailored services. These connections help to increase the base of hydrometeorological data – catalyzed by innovative technologies and approaches – to support WMO Members in water-related decision-making.
HydroSOS – The Global Hydrological Status and Outlook System will monitor and predict global freshwater hydrological conditions. Once operational, this worldwide system will regularly report: the current global hydrological status, including groundwater, river flow and soil moisture; an appraisal of where the current status is significantly different from ‘normal,’ for example indicating potential drought and flood situations; and an assessment of whether this is likely to get better or worse over coming weeks and months.
Fast Facts
By 2050, there will be 9.7 billion people living on our planet.
Frozen Water
Climate change is impacting mountain regions, which cover about a quarter of the Earth’s land surface and are home to around 1.1 billion people. They are known as the “water towers of the world” because river basins with headwaters in the mountains supply freshwater to over half of humanity, including in the Himalaya-Hindu Kush and Tibetan Plateau region, known as the Third Pole.
The cryosphere – or frozen water – is hit hard by climate change. Glaciers are retreating, snow and ice are melting and permafrost is thawing. This translates into a short-term increase in landslides, avalanches and floods and a long-term threat to the security of water supplies for billions of people.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate said that smaller glaciers found for example in Europe, eastern Africa, the tropical Andes and Indonesia are projected to lose more than 80% of their current ice mass by 2100 under high emission scenarios. The retreat of the high mountain cryosphere will continue to adversely affect recreational activities, tourism, and cultural assets.
As mountain glaciers retreat, they are also altering water availability and quality downstream, with implications for many sectors such as agriculture and hydropower.
Limiting warming would help people adapt to changes in water supplies in mountain regions and beyond, and limit risks related to mountain hazards.
Glaciers and ice sheets in polar and mountain regions are losing mass, contributing to an increasing rate of sea level rise, together with expansion of the warmer ocean.
While sea level has risen globally by around 15 cm during the 20th century, it is currently rising more than twice as fast – 3.6 mm per year – and accelerating, according to the IPCC report.
WMO Action
WMO’s Global Crysophere Watch is an international mechanism for supporting all key cryospheric in-situ and remote sensing observations. It provides authoritative, clear, and useable data, information, and analyses on the past, current and future state of the cryosphere.
WMO convened a High Mountain Summit in October 2019 to identify priorities to protect high mountains and the cryosphere. It commits itself to a new Integrated High Mountain Observation and Prediction Initiative as one of the tools to address the challenges of climate change, melting snow and ice and water-related hazards and stress.
It agreed a goal that people who live in mountains and downstream should have open access to hydrological, cryospheric, meteorological, and climate information services to help them adapt to and manage the threats imposed by escalating climate change.
Fast Facts
The current rate of global mean sea-level rise of 5mm/year corresponds to a volume of water discharged by the Amazon river in about 3 months.
Drought
Drought is a prolonged dry period in the natural climate cycle that can occur anywhere in the world. It is a slow onset phenomenon caused by a lack of rainfall. Compounding factors, such as poverty and inappropriate land use, increase vulnerability to drought.
It has a major impact on food security, health and population displacement and migration.
Since time immemorial, drought has been a feature of the natural variability of our climate. But the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts are expected to rise in several parts of the world as a result of climate change, with an increasing human and economic toll.
It has been estimated that droughts are the world’s costliest natural disaster, accounting for 6-8 billion US dollars annually, and impacting more people than any other form of natural disaster. Since 1900, over 11 million people have died as a result of droughts, and 2 billion people have been affected.
Since the 1970s, the land area affected by drought has doubled, undermining livelihoods, reversing development gains and entrenching poverty among millions of people who depend directly on the land. In the period from 1970 to 2012, drought caused almost 680,000 deaths, due to the severe African droughts of 1975, 1983 and 1984.
Despite this, effective drought management policies are missing in most parts of the world. Response to drought tends to be piecemeal and crisis-driven, rather than proactive.
WMO Initiatives
The Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP) is a joint initiative between WMO and the Global Water Partnership, and works with a wide range of partners in order to support stakeholders by providing them with policy and management guidance and by sharing best practices and knowledge for integrated drought management.
This is based on 3 pillars:
#1 Monitoring and Early Warning Systems: It is critical to monitor drought indicators such as precipitation, temperature, soil moisture, vegetation, streamflow and ground water. Early warning systems analyze these drought indicators and disseminate drought forecasts to key stakeholders in a timely manner.
#2 Vulnerability and Impact Assessment: A vulnerability and impact assessment considers social, economic and environmental factors to determine a community’s susceptibility to drought hazards. For example, women, children, pastoralists, farmers and marginalized communities could be vulnerable population groups.
#3 Mitigation and Response: Drought mitigation includes both the structural (i.e. appropriate crops, dams and engineering projects) and non-structural measures (i.e. policies, public awareness, and legal framework) necessary to limit the adverse impacts of drought. Drought response refers to the assistance administered during or immediately after the drought to save lives and meet the affected community’s basic needs.
Fast Facts
Each year water insecurity costs the global economy 500 billion dollars.
The longest dry period ever recorded was 172 months (10 October 1903 – 1 January 1918) in Arica, Chile.
Floods
Floods are the deadliest natural hazards, striking numerous regions in the world each year. During the last decades the trend in flood damages has been growing exponentially. This is a consequence of the increasing frequency of heavy precipitation, changes in upstream land-use and a continuously increasing concentration of population and assets in flood prone areas. This is often exacerbated by inadequate flood planning and management practices.
Sea level rise has increased vulnerability to storm surge and related coastal flooding.
In the period from 1970 to 2012, storms and floods caused over one million deaths.
Flash floods account for approximately 85% of the flooding cases and also have the highest mortality rate (defined as the number of deaths per number of people affected). They are among the world's deadliest disasters with more than 5,000 lives lost annually.
Flood plains are often attractive areas for human development and a vast share of the world’s population depends, whether directly or indirectly, on a number of key natural resources that are generally provided by floodplains.
Floods are an integral part of the natural regime of a river. This means that flood management plays an important role in protecting people and infrastructure from floods and flooding. Integrating flood risks into the management of water resources provides a rationale to shift away from a single focused approach – such as flood control – towards an integrated flood management approach.
WMO Initiatives
Associated Programme on Flood Management
Flash Flood Guidance System
Fast Facts
20 million people are at risk from flooding with the associated damage costing nearly US$80 billion.
Climate Change and Water
Human-induced climate change, as well as naturally occurring climate drivers such as El Niño and La Niña, has a major effect on water.
Climate change is causing the hydrological cycle to speed up as rising temperatures increase the rate of evaporation. More evaporation is causing more precipitation, on average. Higher evaporation and precipitation rates are not evenly distributed around the world. Some areas may experience heavier than normal precipitation, and other areas may become prone to droughts, as the traditional locations of rain belts and deserts shift in response to a changing climate.
Water-related hazards like drought and flooding are thus becoming more serious, and a much greater proportion of annual precipitation is now falling in extreme precipitation events rather than spread more evenly throughout the year.
In many parts of the world, seasonal rainfall patterns are becoming more erratic, affecting agriculture and food security and the livelihoods of millions of people who work on the land.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rural areas are expected to experience major impacts on water availability and supply, food security, infrastructure and agricultural incomes, including shifts in the production areas of food and non-food crops as a result of climate change.
In urban areas climate change is projected to increase risks for people, assets, economies and ecosystems, including risks from storms and extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, landslides, drought, water scarcity, sea level rise and storm surges.
Most rivers and fresh water bodies are trans-boundary and decisions by one country on water resource management often have implications for other countries, thus making water a potential source for both peace and conflict.
And yet, many countries lack the capacity to monitor and analyze relevant data. This means that decisions on major infrastructure projects like dams or hydroelectric plants as well as urban planning are often made on the basis of outdated or incomplete information.
WMO Action
Climate data and information underpin the management of surface water supplies and disaster risk reduction. This includes calculations of the frequency and duration of heavy rainfall, the probable maximum precipitation and flood forecasting. Such data, on weekly, seasonal and annual timescales and at national, regional and local levels, are now more essential than ever.
The WMO-spearheaded Global Framework for Climate Services thus has water as one of its top priorities and seeks to promote a holistic Integrated Water Resources Management approach as the best way forward for efficient, equitable and sustainable development and management of the world's limited water resources and for coping with conflicting demands.
WMO and the Global Water Partnership build on existing initiatives, including integrated programmes on flood and drought management. An integrated, cross-sector approach to water resource management is vital because water investments are spread across many institutions and different levels of government.
Every Drop Counts
Sustainable Development Goal 6 sets ambitious 2030 targets for clean water and sanitation, including integrated water resources management at all levels. As part of efforts to drive forward the sustainable development goals, a High Level Panel on Water was set up. In March 2018, it issued a report entitled "Making Every Drop Count," with recommendations.
Water use has been increasing worldwide by about 1% per year since the 1980s. Growing populations, more water-intensive patterns of growth, increasing rainfall variability, and pollution are combining in many places to put even more pressure on water availability and quality, threatening sustainable development, ecosystems and biodiversity worldwide.
Global water demand is expected to continue increasing at a similar rate until 2050, accounting for an increase of 20 to 30% above the current level of water use, mainly due to rising demand in the industrial and domestic sectors, according to the World Water Development Report 2019.
Over 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress, and about 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year.
Global hydrological conditions of floods and droughts as well as potential conflicts in water use represent some of the greatest challenges and threats facing the world’s population.
And yet, the capacity to monitor and manage this vital resource is fragmented and inadequate. The need for careful water management has never been greater. Strengthening operational hydrological services and improving monitoring and forecasting are key to tackling issues of too much, too little or too polluted water and support operational management, planning and decision support.
Increased water stress and meeting future demands will require increasingly tough decisions about how to allocate water resources between competing water uses.
In many countries, meteorological and weather services are separate from hydrological and water services. Cooperation between these services, and with users, is key to providing integrated and complete information needed to support water-smart decision-making.
WMO is committed to eight long-term ambitions related to water:
· No one is surprised by a flood
· Everyone is prepared for drought
· Hydro-climate and meteorological data support the food security agenda
· High-quality data supports science
· Science provides a sound basis for operational hydrology
· We have a thorough knowledge of the water resources of our world
· Sustainable development is supported by information covering the full hydrological cycle
· Water quality is known
Fast Facts
Only 0.5% of the Earth’s water is readily available for human consumption.
40% of the world’s people are affected by water scarcity.
Source: WMO
Editor: Liu Shuqiao