East Africa reels from deadly floods in extreme weather

A powerful climate phenomenon in the Indian Ocean stronger than any seen in years is unleashing destructive rains and flooding across East Africa -- and scientists say worse could be coming.

Violent downpours in October have displaced tens of thousands in Somalia, submerged whole towns in South Sudan and killed dozens in flash floods and landslides in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

Rising waters have wiped out livestock and destroyed harvests in swathes of the region still reeling from severe drought. Close to a million people in South Sudan alone are affected, with growing fears of disease outbreaks and starvation.

"This is a disaster... People are left with nothing," South Sudan's humanitarian affairs minister, Hussein Mar Nyuot, said Wednesday after the government declared a state of emergency.

The extreme weather is blamed on the Indian Ocean Dipole -- a climate system defined by the difference in sea surface temperature between western and eastern areas of the ocean.

At the moment, the ocean around East Africa is far warmer than usual, resulting in higher evaporation and moist air flowing inwards over the continent as rain: the hallmarks of a "positive" dipole.

But scientists say the strength of this dipole is of a magnitude not seen in years, perhaps even decades.

These waters around East Africa are about two degrees warmer than those of the eastern Indian Ocean near Australia -- an imbalance well beyond the norm.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said the dipole was the strongest since it began recording these fluctuations in 2001. Other datasets suggested a similar event in 1997, BoM added.

"It's much stronger than records have shown from previous times," Red Cross climate advisor and meteorologist Maurine Ambani told AFP.

"This one is definitely significant."