Global water monitor 2022: summary report
The Global Water Monitor provides free, rapid and global information on climate and water resources. This summary report contains information on rainfall, air temperature and humidity, soil water availability, river flows and storage in natural and artificial lakes in 2022. Trends in the water cycle and some of the most important hydrological events of 2022 are interpreted and discussed. A look at hydrological conditions at the end of 2022 can help assess the risk of droughts developing in 2023. This is true to a lesser extent for floods, as the change from drought to flood conditions can happen more rapidly following intense rainfall. Precipitation during the second half of 2022 was unusually low over the Great Plains of Canada and the USA, most of South America, western Russia, Mongolia and much of China. Soil wetness was also below average in these same regions, with the exception of eastern China. Lake storage was unusually low or at least much below average in the Ural river Basin, parts of Mongolia, along the Pacific coast of Alaska and Canada, the US Atlantic coast, and the cone of South America. In these regions, therefore, there appears to be a risk of developing or intensifying drought and water scarcity in 2023.
