The WMO just published '2021 State of Climate Services: Water'.
Here's the PDF: Download 1278_en
For the 2020 report click here. PDF: Download 1252_9-October_en
Here is a short video:
I gave it a quick perusal and liked the way it was organized. It does give short shrift to groundwater.
Foreword
Since 2019, WMO has issued annual reports on the state of climate services in order to provide scientifically-based information to support climate adaptation.
This 2021 edition of the WMO State of Climate Services report focuses on water, an issue that is of great significance to communities in every corner of the globe, and that affects every economic sector. Water lies at the heart of the global agenda on climate adaptation, sustainable development and disaster risk reduction.
Increasing temperatures are resulting in global and regional precipitation changes, leading to shifts in rainfall patterns and agricultural seasons, with a major impact on food security and human health and well-being.
This past year has seen a continuation of extreme, water-related events. Across Asia, extreme rainfall caused massive flooding in Japan, China, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and India. Millions of people were displaced, and hundreds were killed. But it is not just in the developing world that flooding has led to major disruption. Catastrophic flooding in Europe led to hundreds of deaths and widespread damage.
Lack of water continues to be a major cause of concern for many nations, especially in Africa. More than two billion people live in water-stressed conditions and lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Overall, water-related hazards have been increasing in frequency for the past two decades.
There is good news, however. Most nations are determined to improve the way water is managed, with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) reporting that water is a top adaptation priority in the vast majority (79%) of Parties’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement. As we highlight and explore in this report – through data, analysis, and a series of case studies – nations can improve water resource management and reduce the impacts of water-related disasters through better climate services and end-to-end early warning systems – supported by sustainable investments. Towards this end, WMO is a broad-based Water and Climate Coalition to achieve more effective integrated policy-making needed to address growing water and climate- related challenges.
Time is not on our side. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report – the first major review of the science of climate change since 2013 – is a stark reminder that catastrophic heatwaves, droughts and flooding will increase in frequency and severity if we fail to act now. Climate services and early warning systems give us a vital opportunity to prepare and react in a way that can save many lives and protect livelihoods and communities across the world.
Prof. Petteri Taalas
Secretary-General, WMO
Executive Summary
In 2018, the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) called on the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through its Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) to regularly report on the state of climate services with a view to “facilitating the development and application of methodologies for assessing adaptation needs”.
Water is a Top Adaptation Priority
In 2018, 2.3 billion people were living in countries under water stress1,2 and 3.6 billion people faced inadequate access to water at least one month per year. By 2050, the latter is expected to be more than five billion.Assuming a constant population, an additional 8% of the world’s population in the 2000s will be exposed to new or aggravated water scarcity associated with a 2°C of global warming. Concurrent population growth would further increase this number.
Human- and naturally-induced stressors are increasingly adding pressure on water resources, a key prerequisite for human development. In the past 20 years, terrestrial water storage – the summation of all water on the land surface and in the subsur- face, including soil moisture, snow and ice – has been lost at a rate of 1cm per year. The situation is worsening by the fact that only 0.5% of water on Earth is useable and available freshwater.
Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is vital to achieving long-term social, economic and environmental well-being. But, although most countries have advanced their level of IWRM implementation, 107 countries remain off track to hit the goal of sustainably managing their water resources by 2030,6 as set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 6 (SDG 6). In 2020, 3.6 billion people lacked safely managed sanita- tion services, and 2.3 billion lacked basic hygiene services. The current rates of progress need to quadruple in order to reach the global target of universal access by 2030.
Meanwhile, water-related hazards have increased in frequency for the past 20 years. Since 2000, flood-related disasters have increased by 134%, compared with the two previous decades.9 Most of the flood-related deaths and economic losses were recorded in Asia, where end-to-end warning systems for riverine floods require strengthening in many countries. The number and duration of droughts also increased by 29%. Most drought-re- lated deaths occurred in Africa, indicating a need to continue strengthening end-to-end warning systems for drought.
The good news is that nations are determined to improve the situation. According to UNFCCC, water is an adaptation priority in 79% of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement.10 And not only is water among the highest priority sectors across all NDCs, it is a cross-cutting factor affecting adaptation in the majority of sectors.
The State of Play
To reduce adverse impacts associated with water-related disas- ters and support water resource management decisions and improved outcomes, climate services and end-to-end early warning systems, as well as sustainable investments, are required but not yet adequate. In the NDCs (submitted as of August 2021), Parties highlighted the need for strengthening the climate services value chain across its constituent components – including observing systems, data and data management, better forecasting, strengthening of weather services, climate scenarios, projections, and climate information systems.Of the Parties that mention water as a top priority in their updated NDCs, the majority highlight actions that relate to capacity building (57%), forecasting (45%), observing networks (30%), and data collection (28%). However, 60% of National Hydrological Services (NHSs) – the national public agencies mandated to provide basic hydrological information and warning services to the government, the public, and the private sector – lack the full capacities needed to provide climate services for water.
Findings
The WMO assessment in this report found, for WMO Member countries (101) for which data are available, that:
There is inadequate interaction among climate services providers and information users in 43% of WMO Members;
Data is not collected for basic hydrological variables in approximately 40% of WMO Members;
Hydrological data is not made available in 67% of WMO Members;
End-to-end riverine flood forecasting and warning systems are absent or inadequate in 34% of WMO Members that provided data – with only 44% of Members’ existing systems reaching more than two-thirds of the population at risk;
• End-to-end drought forecasting and warning systems are lacking or inadequate in 54% of WMO Members that provided data – with only 27% of Members’ existing systems reaching more than two-thirds of the population at risk.
Achieving the adaptation objectives in developing countries’ NDCs will require significant additional financial commitments. Yet, several constraints limit countries’ capacity to access financing, including low capacities for developing and implementing projects, and difficulties to absorb resources within low-income countries’ public financial systems. Despite a 9% increase in financial pledges made to tackle SDG 6, official development assistance (ODA) commitments remained stable at US$ 8.8 billion, despite increased funding needs to meet targets under the SDG6 – between 2015 and 2019.
Recommendations
Based on its findings, the report makes six strategic recommendations to improve the implementation and effectiveness of climate services for water worldwide:
1. Invest in Integrated Resources Water Management as a solution to better manage water stress, especially in Small Island Devel- oping States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs);
2. Invest in end-to-end drought and flood early warning systems in at-risk LDCs, including for drought warning in Africa and flood warning in Asia;
3. Fill the capacity gap in collecting data for basic hydrological variables which underpin climate services and early warning systems;
4. Improve the interaction among national level stakeholders to co-develop and operationalize climate services with informa- tion users to better support adaptation in the water sector. There is also a pressing need for better monitoring and evaluation of socio-economic benefits, which will help to showcase best practices;
Fill the gaps in data on country capacities for climate services in the water sector, especially for SIDS;
Join the Water and Climate Coalition11 to promote policy development for integrated water and climate assessments, solutions
and services, and benefit from a network of partners that develop and implement tangible, practical projects, programs and systems to improve hydroclimate services for resilience and adaptation.
Enjoy!
"Figuring out the physics behind climate change was '1000 times easier' than getting the world to do something about it." - Nobel Physics Laureate Syukuro Manabe
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