00:00And a new assessment by the World Meteorological Organization has found that rivers around the
00:04world experience one of their driest years in more than three decades in 2025. The study found
00:10that the amount of fresh water stored on or beneath the ground was 42% below normal globally
00:16last year. That includes water in rivers, lakes, groundwater, snow, ice, soil, and vegetation.
00:22The WMO says the climate crisis is making the global water cycle increasingly erratic,
00:27with regions shifting between extreme drought and flooding. In 2025, only about one-third of the
00:32world's rivers had flows within the normal range. About 36% of global river passing areas recorded
00:38below or well below normal flows, while 21% experienced above or much above normal conditions.
00:45The assessment was based on simulations from 13 global hydrological models using observed web data.
00:54For the fourth consecutive years in 2025, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass.
01:03Several regions with smaller glaciers, including the Alps, show signs of having passed peak water.
01:12This is the point at which glacier can no longer contribute more melt water in a hot year because
01:18it has run out of ice to give. Traditionally, these slow reserves have acted as the planet's savings account,
01:29a buffer that absorbs bad years so that a single drought or a single dry season does not translate
01:36directly into a water crisis. One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening
01:46to that savings account. And the simple answer is that we are depleting it. We are spending our reserves.
01:55Last year was one of the driest years for river discharge in 35 years. The past seven years have been
02:03abnormal river flows.
02:05Water-related extreme events continue to devastate communities and economies and are at the heart of the early warnings
02:12for all initiatives championed by the U.N. Secretary General.
02:16At the World Meteorological Organization, we always say that weather respects no borders.
02:23And this is especially true for water. A river basin is fed by water upstream, often in another country.
02:31And a glacier disaster in one country can lead to devastation in another, as we saw with the recent tragedy
02:39of China and Nepal.
02:41This is why we need shared data, shared standards, and shared early warnings.
02:49It's quite too long.
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