Colombia is going through one of its most severe fire seasons in recent years, with nearly 30,000 hectares affected just in Tolima, the department that concentrates around half of the country’s forest fires. But, according to climate authorities, what has been seen so far could be just the beginning.
The most recent statement from the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (Ideam), issued on August 13, confirms that El Niño conditions have been consolidating for three consecutive moving quarters both in the atmosphere and in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and that there is more than a 90% probability they will remain active at least until the first quarter of 2027.
Even more concerning: there is a 69% probability that the phenomenon will reach a “very strong” intensity between October, November, and December of this year, a level that would surpass all El Niño events recorded since 1950.
Diego Restrepo Zambrano, expert in water sciences, flood management, and sustainable urban development, explained that the coupling between ocean temperature and the atmosphere —the mechanism that triggers El Niño’s effects on regional climate— has already been completed. As of August 21, the temperature anomaly in the Niño 3.4 region of the Pacific was about to cross the 2 °C threshold, the point at which the phenomenon enters the “very strong” category according to the classification of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Restrepo was emphatic on one point: the speed at which the ocean has warmed this year is unprecedented in recent times. “It is the Niño with the highest acceleration of the last century,” he noted, explaining that this pace is directly related to climate change. For every degree of atmospheric warming, the atmosphere gains the capacity to hold 7% more water, producing a double-edged effect: more intense rains and floods in some areas, and longer droughts in others. According to the expert, this combination puts both water availability and the country’s food security at risk.
The most exposed areas
Both Ideam and Restrepo agree in identifying the same regions as the most vulnerable to reduced rainfall: the Andean region, the Caribbean region, and the Pacific region. There, an increase in temperatures above historical averages is expected, a significant reduction in precipitation, and greater evapotranspiration, which — warns Ideam — can lead to episodes of water stress, lower flows in rivers and streams, and lower reservoir levels, affecting human consumption, hydroelectric generation, and agriculture.
Meanwhile, Humboldt, the country’s biodiversity research institute, grounds this national outlook on the ground: it identified that the current dry and fire season occurs in an atypical climatic context — with less precipitation, higher temperatures, and winds — particularly in the Magdalena-Cauca river valley and the Colombian Caribbean.
According to Humboldt, tropical dry forests, especially those located in the inter-Andean valleys of the Cauca-Magdalena basin, currently concentrate the greatest fire impact nationwide. Moreover, it is one of the country’s most threatened ecosystems: more than 92% of its original coverage has already been lost.
Humboldt also documented, based on NASA satellite thermal information, that temperature anomalies that began to be noticed between May and June intensified much more markedly during July and August, doubling in some regions of the country. If the trend continues, the extremes recorded in 2024 and 2025 could be surpassed.
Gasoline, not phosphorus
The point both Ideam and Humboldt insist on is that El Niño does not start fires: it intensifies them. Humboldt’s own analysis specifies that 99% of fire events in Colombia originate from human activities —agricultural burns, unmanaged tourism, matches or cigarette butts— and that the drought associated with the phenomenon creates the ideal conditions for those flames, once started, to spread more extensively and intensely and affect vegetation and soils more deeply.
Ideam reaches a similar conclusion in its list of expected impacts: a strong or very strong event “can generate significant alterations in precipitation patterns, increases in air temperature, reductions in flows in some regions, and a higher probability of occurrence of fires in vegetation cover in different sectors of the national territory.” In other words: El Niño does not light the match, but it does dry out the ground so that any spark can turn into a larger fire.
Restrepo agreed that, looking ahead to the coming months, food production in Colombia could be affected by prolonged droughts, and anticipated “obviously also more fires, more heat waves.” In that sense, Restrepo cited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has warned that these extreme events will become more frequent and intense due to global warming, a trend that, according to him, is already visible in recent years.
What’s coming: recovery and new threats
Beyond the immediate emergency, Humboldt warns that the way fires are responded to also matters. The institute points out that not every burned area requires immediate planting: in many cases, recovery should start by protecting the territory and allowing natural regeneration from the soil seed bank, avoiding stressors such as livestock entry or unmanaged tourism.
The analysis also identifies an additional risk for ecosystem recovery: the colonization of burned areas by species with high invasive potential — spiny broom, acacia, and pine in high areas, and trupillo, acacia, and leucaena in dry forests — which can increase the availability of combustible material and favor new fires in upcoming dry seasons.
With the El Niño phenomenon projected to intensify between September and December of this year, before remaining active until early 2027, authorities and researchers agree that the country has not yet seen the worst moment of this season. The challenge, they point out, is not only to extinguish the fires already occurring but to prepare for a scenario in which drought and high temperatures last for several more months.
EDWIN CAICEDO
Environment and Health Journalist
@CaicedoUcros
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