Rain is expected to elude the Horn of Africa for the sixth straight season, leading to a drought worse than a decade ago in which 260,000 people were killed in Somalia alone.
Depressed rainfall and high temperatures are forecast for the March-to-May season, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) said.
The area comprises Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti, more broadly including all or parts of Kenya, Sudan and South Sudan.
The crucial three month-period typically contributes as much as 60 per cent of annual rainfall in the equatorial part of the Greater Horn of Africa, that also includes Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania.
The outlook confirms the fears of meteorologists and aid agencies who have warned of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe as the longest and most-severe drought sweeps the region.
"In parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda that have been most affected by the recent drought, this could be the sixth failed consecutive rainfall season," said ICPAC.
The Nairobi-based group is the designated regional climate centre by the World Meteorological Organisation.
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The UN says 12 million people in Ethiopia, 5.6 million in Somalia and 4.3 million in Kenya are 'acutely food insecure' after years of drought. All photos: Eduardo Soteras / AFP -
The region's people, many of them herders and subsistence farmers, are enduring their fifth consecutive poor rainy season -
The UN says 1.7 million people have been driven from their homes by a lack of water and pasture -
The Horn of Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, and extreme weather events are occurring with increased frequency and intensity -
Eight of the 13 past rainy seasons have brought below average rainfall, according to the Climate Hazards Centre in the US -
That has brought hardship for millions -
The last famine was declared in Somalia in 2011, when 260,000 people - half of them children under the age of six - died of hunger, partly because the international community did not act fast enough, says the UN -
Crops were ravaged by a locust invasion between 2019 and 2021. They have since been wiped out, while livestock has also suffered -
UN humanitarian agency OCHA estimated in November that 9.5 million cattle had died -
The war in Ukraine has contributed to soaring food and fuel costs, disrupted global supply chains and diverted aid money away from the region -
Somalia has been hit hardest, with the drought affecting more than half of its population - about 7.85 million people -
In December, OCHA said the nation was not yet in the grip of full-blown famine thanks to the response of aid agencies and local communities -
But people were nevertheless suffering "catastrophic" food shortages, it said, and if assistance was not scaled up, famine could be expected in southern Somalia as soon as April -
Rural people in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts, and displaced people in Baidoa town and the capital Mogadishu were most at risk -
OCHA said that by June, the number of people at risk of starvation was expected to more than triple to 727,000 from October -
According to the UN children's agency Unicef, almost two million children across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia require urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form of hunger -
It said in September that 730 children had died between January and July in nutrition centres in Somalia, but that the real numbers were likely to be much higher -
Lacking water, milk and food, and often living in squalid conditions, the youngest become so weak they are vulnerable to diseases such as measles and cholera -
Unicef said 2.7 million children had stopped going to school -
'There is no end in sight for the hunger crisis and hope is slowly fizzling out,' said Xavier Joubert, Ethiopia director for the British charity Save the Children -
'There's no doubt that the need has grown to an enormous scale,' he said, in an urgent call for funding -
Only 55.5 percent of the $5.9 billion sought by the UN to tackle the crisis has been provided -
Early humanitarian action averted a famine in Somalia in 2017
Delegates in Kenyan capital Nairobi for the 63rd Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum said the March-to-May forecast predicts low rainfall and high temperatures.
In parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda most affected by the recent drought, it could be yet another failed rainfall season.
The probability for a drier spell is also enhanced for parts of Rwanda, Burundi, eastern Tanzania and western South Sudan, said ICPAC.
It said wetter conditions were expected over the cross-border areas of Ethiopia and South Sudan, north-western Kenya and parts of central and southern Tanzania.
And warmer temperatures are likely across the region, particularly over Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, north-western South Sudan, southern and north-eastern Ethiopia, northern Somalia, northern and western Kenya and parts of south-eastern and western Tanzania.
Worse than region's harshest for 60 years?
ICPAC director Guleid Artan said: “Even if the general conditions for the season do not look favourable, people can still take advantage of rainfall. This is why I urge all to consult our weekly and monthly forecasts, which have a high degree of predictability.”
In the regions severely hit by drought, trends are worse than those observed during the drought of 2010-11, ICPAC said, when more than 13 million people were affected by famine in the worst drought for 60 years.
Close to 23 million people are currently highly food insecure in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, according to the region's Food Security and Nutrition Working Group.
