The Mozambican meteorological services say that the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has been battering parts of the south and central regions since the end of last year, has entered its weakening phase and should dissipate from next month.

An official source from the National Meteorological Institute (INAM) said on Thursday (21), on the sidelines of the launch of the Annual Report on the State of the Climate in Mozambique for 2023, that "El-Niño has already reached its peak and is currently weakening". "We expect it to disappear between April and May, all the models give that indication," said Bernardino Nhantumbo, a climate researcher at INAM, quoted by the newspaper Terra Magazine.

Even so, the impacts of this phenomenon could continue and will be felt for some time to come, according to the source. For this reason, "despite the intense rainfall resulting from the severe tropical storm Filipo, which affected some districts hit by El Niño, the situation remains one of concern".

"The storm is a one-off event, so it won't solve the water deficit problems in some parts of the country, so we continue to encourage actions aimed at creating resilience in communities to continue because we are already at the end of the rainy season and the biggest challenge when we have a drought event is the start of the next rainy season, because communities depend on what they harvest," he explained, pointing out, however, some exceptional cases where the impact of Filipo will allow some minimal relief.

According to the preliminary assessment, El-Niño turned out to be more severe than initially forecast

"We had initially predicted that we would have around five districts in Gaza province, but then El Niño proved to be much more intense and severe and spread its impacts to other areas of the country," explained the source, pointing to the provinces of Maputo, Inhambane, Manica, Sofala, Tete and Zambézia as being the ones that, along with Gaza, ended up being affected by the phenomenon.