The Sahara Desert has experienced a rare flood in 50 years! The global water resources situation highlights the intensification of climate change

The Sahara Desert region has experienced the first flood disaster caused by extreme rainfall in half a century. Rare rainstorms have formed blue lakes between palm trees and sand dunes.

The latest report released by the World Meteorological Organization states that the global water resources situation highlights the intensification of climate change.

The driest region in the world has suffered from rare floods

The Sahara Desert in southeastern Morocco is one of the driest regions in the world, and it rarely rains in late summer. CBS of the United States reported on the 12th, citing Moroccan government officials, that the average annual rainfall in many areas there is less than 250 millimeters, while the rainfall exceeded this level for two consecutive days in September this year. In the village of Tagunit, about 450 kilometers south of the capital Rabat, the rainfall exceeded 100 millimeters within 24 hours. In Morocco and Algeria, heavy rain and the floods it triggered have claimed more than 20 lives, damaged farmers’ harvests, and the government has allocated emergency funds for assistance.

Moroccan meteorological official Houssine Youabeb told the Associated Press: “In 50 years, we have never had so much rainfall in such a short period of time.” Before this, the local area had suffered from drought for six consecutive years, forcing farmers in most parts of Morocco to leave their land fallow and implementing limited water supply in cities and villages.

In September this year, the World Meteorological Organization released the “Report on the State of Climate in Africa 2023”, which shows that Africa is bearing an increasingly heavy burden due to climate change and is incurring disproportionately high costs in climate adaptation.

African countries lose an average of 2% to 5% of their gross domestic product each year in response to extreme climates. Many African countries allocate as much as 9% of their budgets to dealing with extreme climate events. In sub-Saharan Africa, the cost of climate adaptation in the next decade is expected to reach 30 to 50 billion US dollars annually, equivalent to 2% to 3% of the region’s GDP.

Celeste Schallo, the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, said that over the past 60 years, Africa has warmed more rapidly compared to the global average. In 2023, Africa experienced heatwaves, heavy rainfall, floods, tropical cyclones and prolonged droughts. Extreme climate events have had a severe impact on the region and brought about serious economic consequences.

Climate change is intensifying! The global water cycle is “more unpredictable”.

The latest “State of Global Water Resources Report” released by the World Meteorological Organization emphasizes that extreme manifestations of the global water resources situation send out dangerous signals of intensified climate change.

At present, “uneven droughts and floods” is no longer a low-probability event. The year 2023 was the hottest on record globally, and this summer also became the hottest on record. The rise in temperature has to some extent led to long-term drought in some parts of the world, with rivers in nearly half of the world drying up. Meanwhile, 2023 was also a year marked by frequent floods. Countries such as Libya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda were all affected by floods, causing a large number of casualties.

The global water cycle has become more unstable and unpredictable. As a result, we have witnessed more extreme weather conditions, such as Hurricane Helene that previously hit the United States and the increasingly severe drought problem worldwide. Claire Nullis, a spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization, said in an interview the other day.

Water is a warning signal of climate change. Celeste Schallo, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, introduced that extreme rainfall, floods and droughts are merely surface phenomena, and what they reflect behind them is the continuous intensification of global climate change.

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change once released a report stating that due to global warming, the incidence of extreme weather events has increased unprecedentedly. With the intensification of global warming, extreme weather events will continue to increase.

The more intuitive change brought about by global warming is the melting of glaciers. Glaciers, which are the sources of many rivers, have melted in large quantities over the past 50 years. It was previously reported that although Switzerland received a relatively large amount of snowfall during the 2023-2024 snow season, the rate of glacier melting was higher than the average. Data from the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Project shows that the area of glaciers in Switzerland has decreased by 2.5% since the beginning of this year alone. A century ago, Switzerland had 4,000 glaciers. Now, only a quarter of them remain.

The situation in Switzerland is a microcosm of the world. The World Meteorological Organization has warned that the global glacier loss in 2023 is equivalent to over 600 billion tons of water, making it the most severe loss in the past 50 years. Although this will increase the water volume of the rivers in the relevant countries in the short term, it will lead to very serious consequences in the long run, especially possibly threatening the long-term water safety of the residents around the river basin.

If the glaciers are completely lost in a few decades, the situation will be very serious. By then, the high flow of rivers caused by the melting of glaciers will also disappear accordingly. Stefan Urenbrook, director of the Hydrology, Water and Cryosphere Division of the World Meteorological Organization, said that if glaciers disappear, the state of global hydrology and ecosystems will be completely changed.