State of Global Water Resources 2022

Highlights

River Discharge & Reservoirs

Groundwater Levels

Soil Moisture, Evapotranspiration, Terrestrial Water Storage

Throughout 2022, anomalies in soil moisture, total terrestrial water storage and evapotranspiration echoed the deviations in river discharge conditions, e.g. Europe experienced increased ET and decreased Soil Moisture during summer, conditioned by drought.

High Impact Hydrologic Events

Selected most notable high impact hydrological events across the globe in 2022 - points indicate flood (blue) and drought (red) events.

Highlight Stories of 2022

State of the Snow Cover and Glaciers

In 2022, the snow cover in the Alps remained significantly below a 30-year climatology, affecting discharge of the major European rivers. The Andes saw declining winter snow, being the lowest in 2021 with some recovery in 2022, impacting water supplies in Chile and Argentina. Observations of Georgia's glaciers, especially the Shkhara, reveal doubling of melting rates over the past years. The Asian Water Tower observed significant glacial melting and changing river run-offs of the Indus, Amu Darya, Yangtze and Yellow River basins, highlighting the deepening influence of climate change on regional water resources. 

EW4All (Early Warnings for All)

Thanks to partners, WMO Members and experts

© World Meteorological Organization, 2023 The designations employed in this map are in conformity with United Nations practice. The presentation of material therein does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of WMO concerning the legal status of any country, area or territory or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its borders. The depiction and use of boundaries, geographic names and related data are not warranted to be error free nor do they necessarily imply official endorsement or acceptance by WMO.

Groundwater

International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC) (Elisabeth Lictevout, Arnaud Sterckx and Elie Gerges)

Evapotranspiration and Soil moisture

NASA (Sujay Kumar and Wanshu Nie)

Total Terrestrial Water Storage

Andreas Guentner (German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ))

State of snow and glaciers

G. Kordzakhia, L.Shengelia, G. Tvauri (Georgian HydroMet Service), Joel Fiddes, (Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, Davos, Switzerland), Mariano Masiokas, Leandro Cara, Ricardo Villalba (Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales, Mendoza, Argentina), René Garreaud, Duncan Christie (Center for Climate and Resilience Research, Santiago, Chile),  Simon Gascoin( Centre d'études spatiales de la biosphère (Cesbio), France),  Tandong Yao (Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research), and Lawrence Mudryk, (SWE researcher at Environment and Climate Change, Canada)

Lead authors

Stefan Uhlenbrook, Sulagna Mishra, Rodica Nitu (WMO), Anastasia Lobanova, Iulii Didovets (Consultants)

Storymap

Ryutaro Ikeda