Water

As sea levels rise along the coasts of the United States, a new study warns that hundreds of plants nationwide could be inundated, leaving more than 31 million people without any wastewater treatment services, under the worst-case-scenario projection—an almost 2-meter rise.

This special water edition of the WMO Bulletin draws attention to the programmes and activities of WMO in helping Member States and Territories to find solutions to the problems they face across the entire water resources value chain. The contents will

Global lake evaporation will increase 16 percent by the end of the century as a consequence of climate change, a new study finds. This accelerated rate of evaporation will, among other outcomes, trigger stronger precipitation events. Understanding these dynamics will be critical if scientists are to accurately predict the future hydrological response to climate change.

Marine salvage experts are floating a plan to tug icebergs from Antarctica to South Africa's drought-hit Cape Town to help solve the region's worst water shortage in a century. The chunks of ice would be guided across the ocean, chopped into a slurry and melted for drinking water. The city's taps could run dry as soon as 2019 if winter rains do not come as planned.

Urgent action is needed to address water-related disasters which accounted for 90% of the 1,000 most severe disasters that have occurred since 1990, according to the final outcome document – Making Every Drop Count - of the High Level Panel on Water, issued in March to kick off the International Decade for Action on Water for Sustainable Development.

This time last year Aucklanders were a hair's breadth from having to boil their tap water due to a record rainstorm. Watercare, the council-owned company charged with providing safe drinking water and treating Auckland's wastewater, is working to strengthen its ability cope with more regular extreme weather.

Participants from three small North Pacific island countries, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau, joined development partners last week (23-27 April 2018) to share experiences from the 2015-2016 severe El Niño drought and explore ways to work with communities to secure food and water resources ahead of the next drought.

Despite ramped-up conservation efforts and hopes lifted by a few recent rainstorms, residents of the South African metropolis still face the possibility of a water doomsday. The city still finds itself in the middle of a perfect, dry storm, one in which years of drought coupled with rapid population growth have set the stage for a catastrophe.