World Water Day: Building a sustainable future for water

World Water Day offsite link recognizes our planet is facing a growing water crisis that threatens our collective health, safety and environment. Clean, sufficient and reliable water resources are essential. That’s why today the White House and NOAA announced a number of initiatives that work toward building a sustainable water future for the United States.

NOAA's commitments in this area will provide communities and businesses with the tools, data, and information they need to mitigate risk and plan for the future. These include:

• increasing efficiency of reservoir operations to balance flood and drought risk;

• improving drought monitoring and forecasting;

• improving identification and monitoring of harmful algal blooms;  

• developing a new computer model for water to dramatically enhance the nation’s river forecasting capabilities; and

• launching a water resources “dashboard” as part of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit.

These improvements, combined with NOAA’s Water Initiative, will provide scientists the comprehensive, integrated understanding of the water cycle that is central to protecting lives and livelihoods and safeguarding our environment and economy. Capturing the full picture of water will yield better data, deeper insight and sharper foresight — all essential to developing the solutions needed to reduce risk, quantify uncertainty about having a sustainable water supply and keep America’s communities ready, responsive and resilient to a changing planet.