GENEVA — Rivers worldwide suffered one of their driest years for discharge in more than three decades in 2025, the World Meteorological Organization said in its State of Global Water Resources report released on 17 September 2026, warning that the planet’s freshwater buffers are eroding on a multi-year timescale. Below-normal river flows covered about 36 percent of global basin area in 2025, based on simulations from 13 global hydrological models driven by observed weather data.
For the seventh consecutive year, river basins with historically “normal” flows were in a clear minority — roughly 34–38 percent, against a 1991–2020 average near 46 percent. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said the findings have “serious future implications” because freshwater stocks act as the planet’s buffer in exceptionally dry years. “We are depleting that savings account,” she said.
FAKTA
- 2025 was one of the driest years for river discharge globally in 35 years of data, with below-normal flows over 36% of global basin area (source: WMO, 17 September 2026).
- For a seventh consecutive year, basins with “normal” flows were a minority: 34–38%, versus a 1991–2020 average near 46%.
- Global terrestrial water storage — groundwater, lakes and rivers, soil moisture, vegetation, ice and snow — has shown a declining trend since 2014–2016, which Saulo called “a persistent, decade-long signal.”
- Nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showed conditions outside the historical norm in 2025, with the balance shifting further toward deficit rather than recovery.
- For the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass; between 2023 and 2025 glaciers lost a cumulative 1,400 gigatonnes of water — about one third of annual freshwater withdrawals.
- Asia and Africa together accounted for at least half of all recorded water-related extreme events and more than 80% of reported associated deaths over the past five years.
- Saulo said the strengthening El Niño will increase the risk of drought in some areas and flooding in others.
Global water resources: the savings account is depleting
“Traditionally these slow reserves have acted as the planet’s savings account: a buffer that absorbs bad years so that a single drought or a single dry season does not translate directly into a water crisis,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo at the report’s launch. “We are depleting that savings account.”
Groundwater tells a similar story, WMO reports. Nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showed conditions outside the historical norm in 2025, and the balance shifted further toward deficit compared with 2024 — not toward recovery.
Erratic cycle: too little or too much
The report shows the global water cycle becoming more erratic and unpredictable, swinging between too little or too much. Some river basins, such as parts of South Asia, had too much water, even as over a third of the world’s basins ran below normal. Record-breaking floods and droughts occurred in each of the past five years, 2021–2025, with some places experiencing little recovery time between events, WMO says.
Responding to a question about whether the changing water cycle contributed to the deadly Nepal–China flooding disaster, Saulo explained that melting ice and rock was one factor in the chain of events that sent a wall of water and debris downstream on 26 August, killing at least 1,367 people. Read the related coverage on the main Watan News site.
What happens next
WMO warns of the serious future implications of the declining trend in terrestrial water storage, since such stocks buffer the planet in exceptionally dry years. With a strengthening El Niño raising drought risk in some areas and flood risk in others, the agency says better water data and early warnings are essential — especially in Africa and Asia, which are among the least represented regions in hydrological observations despite being most affected by water-related extremes.
