WMO State of Global Water Resources 2024

Title cover of the report (source: WMO).

Abnormal is the new normal. This is one of the key messages of the new State of Global Water Resources report 2024, which was published on Wednesday, 18 September 2025 by WMO. The State of the Global Water Resources report is now in its fourth year and gives a comprehensive overview on the status of the global water resources such as river discharge, reservoirs, lakes, groundwater levels, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, terrestrial water storage and snow cover and glaciers. This helps in identification of hotspots at a global scale to inform planning and policy making and promotes monitoring and data sharing. GRDC has again supported the acquisition of global discharge data and luckily an increased engagement in terms of data sharing from WMO Member States could be reported. The number of river discharge stations included in the report increased thereby significantly from 713 stations in 26 countries in the last year up to 2,777 stations in 41 countries in 2024. For the first time, here also the Remote Sensing-based Extension of GRDC (RSEG) dataset was used, which extends the GRDC time series using remote sensing data. This dataset has been developed by the Institute of Geodesy, University of Stuttgart, using GRDC data.

Growth in data sources for the State of Global Water Resources reports in the years 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024: (a) number of countries contributing data, (b) number of variables, (c) number of stations with observed river discharge data (both quality-controlled and provisional data), (d) number of groundwater wells (source: WMO).

For each of the variables presented in the chapters, the anomaly was calculated by comparing the state in the year 2024 to the annual long-term means obtained from the historical period (observed and historical, respectively). One of the alarming key messages include that 2024 is the 6th year in a row showing an erratic hydrological cycle. Around 60% of rivers globally showed either too much or too little water. Overall, 2024 was dry and hot, but marked disparities appear in regional patterns: While certain areas suffered severe drought, others endured multiple floods. In addition, all glaciated regions in the world reported ice loss for 2024.

Observed mean river discharge for the year 2024 compared to the period 1991–2020 or 2001–2020. The results are based on observed river discharge data: circles indicate stations with 30 years of observations, triangles indicate stations with at least 20 years of observations, and squares represent extended time series of river discharge data derived from satellite-based infilling (RSEG dataset). Observations were obtained from National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC). The inset chart (bottom left) shows the data distribution excluding the 473 extended data points (source: WMO).

Overall, the report highlights that investments in global water resources monitoring are urgently needed. Although the 2024 report benefited from increased data sharing and participation by WMO Members, there are still significant gaps in global water monitoring and open data sharing. This emphasizes the need for continued progress in these areas, particularly in Africa, South America, and Asia.

Further information and the full report are available at the website of WMO.

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