From drought to floods in North Africa: What could the super El Niño do next?

Morocco spent most of the last decade drying out.

Between 2019 and 2024, the country recorded six consecutive years of below-average rainfall, the longest on record.

The 2023-24 hydrological year was the driest in more than six decades, with a national total of just 106.4 mm.

But this was not simply another dry spell.

The problem went far beyond rainfall.

The squeeze was structural as much as meteorological: per-capita renewable water availability has fallen to about 620 cubic metres a year , exacerbating water stress, while three decades of overuse significantly reduced water levels in several aquifers .

Nothing about the autumn of 2025 suggested that was about to change.

Then came the winter of 2025–26.

The rain returned suddenly, and on a scale Morocco had not seen in a generation.

Seven years of drought ended in a single winter.

Severely depleted reservoirs began filling rapidly.

Rivers that had run dry started flowing again.

Now, a record-breaking El Niño is developing in the Pacific.

Could it send northwestern Africa back into drought? Analysis by my colleagues and me suggests otherwise .