“Water -related dangers continue to cause significant devastation this year“Said Celeste Saulo, general secretary of the OMM.” The last examples are the devastating monsoon floods in Pakistan, floods in South Sudan and sudden mortal floods on the Indonesian island of Bali. And unfortunately, We do not see this trend end. “
Mrs. Saulo said that these emergencies have occurred in increasingly warm air temperatures, which allow more water to be maintained in the atmosphere that leads to a heavier rain.
His comments coincided with the publication of a new OMM report on river roads, snow and ice in the state of the world, which indicates that 2024 was the most popular in 175 years of observation, with the average annual temperature of the surface that reaches 1.55 ° C above the preindustrial baseline from 1850 to 1900.
Storm Boris Legacy
In this context in September 2024, Central and Eastern Europe experienced devastating flash floods caused by the deadly storm Boris that uprooted tens of thousands of people. It is likely that similar disasters occur more frequently, although, in theory, they should be extremely rare.
In the Czech Republic, several rivers flooded extremely “that in reality it should only occur statistically only every 100 years,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of Hydrology, Water Division and WMO Cristofer.
“A century event happened … unfortunately, statistics show that these extreme events can become even more frequent. “
Himalayas flood
Another example of the increasingly erratic behavior of the world’s water cycle is extremely strong rain that has affected the parts of Himachal Pradesh or Jammu and Kashmir.
“The region saw extremely strong rains when it was not expected; The monsoon arrived early“Sulagna Mishra, OMM scientific officer said.” So, we are talking about System’s unpredictability is growing, more and more. “
Regarding the impact of the pronounced weather phenomenon of El Niño last year, the WMO report indicates that it contributed to severe drought in the Amazon basin last year.
Likewise, the northwest of Mexico and the northern part of North America saw rains below the average, as well as southern and southeast Africa.
“The boy in early 2024 played a role,” said Mrs. Saul, “but scientific evidence shows that our changing climate and growing temperatures lead to more extreme events, both droughts and floods.”
Our world connected
The other findings of the OMM report confirm the wettest conditions of normal in the center-western Africa, Lake Victoria in Africa, Kazakhstan and southern Russia, Central Europe, Pakistan and northern India, southern Iran and Northeast of China in 2024.
One of the key messages of the UN Agency’s report is that what happens with the water cycle in a part of the world has a direct relationship with another.
The melted glaciers continue to be an important concern for meteorologists due to the speed at which they are disappearing and their existential threat to the downstream communities and in coastal areas.
“2024 was the third consecutive year with a generalized glacial loss in all regions,” Saul said. “The glaciers lost 450 gigatons, this is the equivalent of a huge seven kilometers high block, seven kilometers wide and seven kilometers deep, or 180 million Olympic swimming pools, sufficient to add around 1.2 millimeters to the worldwide sea level, increasing the risk of flooding for hundreds of people on the coasts.”
The report also highlights the critical need to improve current flow data, groundwater, soil moisture and water quality, which remain strongly underground.