An unwanted guest: El Niño and Africa in 2016

NAIROBI: El Niño is the largely unwanted Christmas gift - a warming of the tropical Pacific causing drought and floods that will peak at the end of this month, but will impact weather systems around the globe into 2016.

Pastoralist communities in the Horn of Africa are some of the hardest hit by the drought. They rely on livestock for income and food, and the lack of water only increases their existing vulnerability. © Katherine Bundra Roux/IFRC (p-DJI0104)

This year's El Niño has been steadily gaining strength since March. It's likely to be one of the most extreme events of this nature yet seen, with the UN's emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, warning that "millions will be impacted".

El Niño's links with drought in southern Africa and the Horn, and with heavy rains in East Africa, are well-established. Across the rest of the continent the climate connection is less clear. Other factors come into play, such as temperatures in the North Atlantic for West Africa's weather, according to Richard Choularton, the World Food Programme's chief of climate resilience for food.

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