Anticipated El Niño Impacts on Water Resources and Water Infrastructure in Somalia: Technical Brief, September 2026

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Executive summary

AT A GLANCE

El Niño is under way and strengthening: NOAA gives a greater than 90 percent chance of a very strong event, and ICPAC a 90 percent probability of above-normal October–December rainfall over central and southern Somalia.

Against that outlook, all 7,517 strategic water sources in FAO-SWALIM's and MoEWR national inventory were screened for flood exposure. 507 lie in areas of confirmed historical inundation; a further 97 are supported as exposed by two or more independent lines of evidence. 71 sources are classified Very high risk and 524 High risk, including 68 of the strategic boreholes that SWALIM and FMS MoEWR monitors weekly.

Ten districts hold 65 percent of the at-risk stock. Protective works cost roughly 7 percent of the corrective and emergency response they displace and must be financed in September to be delivered before the rains.

The forecast, and its confidence

El Niño is present and intensifying, and the forecasting centres agree to an unusual degree. NOAA's ENSO Diagnostic Discussion of 13 August 2026 maintains an El Niño Advisory on a July Niño-3.4 anomaly of +1.4 °C and gives a greater than 90 percent chance of a very strong event through the 2026-27 northern winter; IRI puts El Niño probability at 100 percent through early 2027; ICPAC gives a 90 percent probability of above-normal October–December rainfall over central and southern Somalia, with totals above 400 mm and a likely positive Indian Ocean Dipole.

FEWS NET expects September–November rainfall above 120 percent of average with an early onset and carries an explicit risk of Famine (IPC Phase 5) in riverine and agropastoral areas should flooding be extreme. Table 1 records each position with its issue date.

The ENSO and seasonal rainfall signals are high confidence. The translation from a three-month regional rainfall anomaly to inundation at a specific water point is not, and is treated throughout this report as a scenario rather than a forecast. Above-normal seasonal rainfall does not by itself place a borehole under water.