For people living in parts of Asia that have experienced severe flooding in recent months, the global weather report may seem confusing or even misleading.
Millions of people live in eastern or southern China, in northern VietnamLaos, Thailand, Myanmar and in southern India was hit hard last month by the worst floods, which in some places were hailed as ‘the worst in a century’.
However, a a new report by the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) it says that most of the world’s rivers have dried up in the last year and the world’s rivers have dried up the most in 30 years.
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Climate change in 2023 has caused “extreme heatwaves and climate disruptions ranging from heavy rains and floods to droughts,” the main report said.
The heat is causing heavy rains and severe droughts. With global warming, “we are facing increasing problems of too much or too little water,” Celeste SauloWMO secretary general, he said.
Large parts of North, Central and South America suffered from extreme drought and reduced rivers, with the “Mississippi and Amazon basins at record-low water levels” because last year was the hottest on record, with temperatures 1.45C above pre-industrial levels.
Meanwhile, the east coast of Africa experienced above-normal flows, while the Horn of Africa, which had suffered five consecutive rainy seasons, was affected by floods.
“In Asia and Oceania, major river basins – Ganges, Brahmaputra and Mekong – experienced below-normal conditions in almost all of their areas,” he said.
Between 2022 and 2021, more than half of the world’s catchment areas will see deviations in water flow that are “significantly lower than normal,” he said.
Lake Coari in the Amazon faced low water levels, resulting in high water temperatures, and Lake Turkana, shared between Kenya and Ethiopia, had above-normal volumes, following more-than-normal river flows.
North America and Europe suffered a drop in groundwater levels due to prolonged drought, but other regions such as South Africa, India, Ireland, Australia and Israel enjoyed above-normal groundwater levels in their wells.
Greatest loss of glacial mass in 50 years
Glaciers have lost more than 600 gigatons (Gt) of water – the biggest loss recorded in the last five decades. It was the second year in a row that all glaciated regions reported ice loss.
The glaciers in Europe, Scandinavia, the Caucasus, northwestern Canada, western South Asia and New Zealand have all passed the “high water” – the threshold of high speed due to melting, he said, while the southern Andes, Patagonia, the Russian Arctic and Svalbard. seems to be seeing an increase in melting.
In terms of human impact, Africa is the most affected by extreme hydrological events, which said, as 11,000 lives were lost when two dams collapsed in Libya due to flooding, in a disaster that affected a quarter of the country’s population.
The floods also affected the countries of the Horn of Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Mozambique and Malawi, which resulted in the death of more than 1,600 people.
It was one extreme or the other, with many droughts affecting the south of the United States, Central America, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Brazil, causing a loss of 3% in gross product (GDP) in Argentina and the lowest levels ever seen. in the Amazon River and Lake Titicaca.
Although the drought has greatly affected the yield of farms and crops, floods and severe weather have also caused significant damage to buildings and homes in many areas. Only China suffered economic losses amounting to 40 billion dollars last year.
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