'Water is the canary in the coal mine of climate change,' WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo told The Guardian. 'We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods, and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems, and economies.' This highlights the urgency of monitoring water sources as indicators of broader climate issues.
Rising temperatures have accelerated the planet's natural hydrological cycle, Saulo noted. 'It has also become more erratic and unpredictable,' she told the newspaper, 'and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water.' This underscores the complexity of managing water resources amid climate change.
As the report notes, the Amazon river basin's water levels reached their lowest level since 1902 last year, and the shift from La Niña in late 2022 and early 2023 to El Niño later that year 'appears to have been a key climatic driver in this record-breaking drought.' This emphasizes the regional impact of global climate patterns.
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