WMO: Global Water Cycle Increasingly Erratic, 2025 Among Driest Years for Rivers

The WMO's framing matters less for any single year than for the trend it describes: a water cycle that is harder to predict changes the risk profile of everything that depends on predictable freshwater, from agriculture to industry to hydropower. The near-decade decline in terrestrial water storage is the more structural signal, since it points to depletion rather than one bad season. For water-linked assets and infrastructure, the open question is whether this volatility gets priced as a chronic constraint or continues to be treated as weather.