A prolonged drought in the eastern Horn of Africa has created food and water shortages, pushing pastoralist communities and their livestock to the brink
When the sea surface is warmer in the western Pacific—as is the case under La Niña conditions—the air over Indonesia warms, rising and traveling west as far as East Africa. There it collides with air traveling in the opposite direction from the Atlantic, and sinks. That creates hot, dry conditions that also act as a barrier to incoming moisture from the Indian Ocean.
Unfortunately, Funk continues, there is little sign of a let-up. “Current sea surface temperature observations and forecasts continue to resemble many recent dry March-to-May rainy seasons,” he says, which suggests strongly that a fourth consecutive failed rainy season is in store. Since 1999, however, on average “poor March to May rains are coming every two to three years.” A single failed rainy season can cause hardship. Two in a row can create famine, as when 260,000 people, half of them children,in 2010 and 2011. If the upcoming season were to fail, it would be the fourth in a row, plunging the region into a drought of a length not experienced since 1981 and placing as many as 20 million people at risk.
These massive rains may also be the result of a changing climate. Funk notes not only that warmer atmospheric temperatures allow for more water vapor and hence greater precipitation, but also that the 2019 rains coincided with an extremeevent, a relatively recently recognized climate pattern that has been called “ENSO’s neighbor” and the “Indian Niño.”
“The number of people in the region who are food insecure has almost doubled since COVID,” he says. “And then you've got massive humanitarian needs in countries like Afghanistan, in Yemen, in northern Ethiopia, where we have the conflict in Tigray.”
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