By James Painter BBC News, West Timor

Aureliana Siki fears for the health of her daughter Amelia

But she seems far more anxious about her second child than the imminent arrival of another.

"She just won't eat, she's always getting sick and having diarrhoea," she says of her 18-month-old daughter, Amelia Jessica.

"I am so worried she is going to die."

Amelia clings to her mother, listlessly.

She weighs just seven kilos and is officially classified as having severe malnutrition.

I am giving my children three meals a day but I have had to reduce the quantity in the portions Aureliana Siki West Timor mother

Aureliana is aware of one of the reasons why her daughter is severely malnourished.

"The problem is that we had a bad harvest this year," she says.

"Instead of harvesting the normal four sacks of rice this year, we only had two. And instead of 20 bunches of maize, we only had 10," she explains.

"I am giving my children three meals a day but I have had to reduce the quantity in the portions."

Other women in Aureliana's village of Tes in a remote part of West Timor confirm that they too have lost about half of their production this year.

They say some families are only eating twice a day. The reason is clear: climate unpredictability.

Failing crops

Normally the wet and dry seasons are distinct. It rains from November to March, and then is dry from April to October. This year the rainy season was short, causing drought in some areas.

"Last year the rain did arrive in November," explains Yosefina Lake, a 39-year-old woman also from Tes, "but then it was dry again in December and we lost a lot of our crop."

The women are anxious and sad. They say many children in the village are losing weight. They know because every week they go to the government health post in the village, known as the Posyandu, to have their children weighed and measured.

Villagers in Tes blame climate unpredictability for poor harvests

Official figures show that of the 60 children under five living in Tes, 23 were under weight in July, and 13 had severe malnutrition.

West Timor is one of the poorest areas of Indonesia, and the district of North Central District (TTU) where Tes is situated is one of the poorest in West Timor.

In TTU alone more than 1,200 children are severely malnourished, while in the whole of West Timor there are more than 9,000.

"There are several reasons why there is severe malnutrition here," says Anton Efi from Yabiku, an NGO working in the area, "but unreliable local food production is certainly one of them."

The villagers talk of God being responsible for the weather. They are unfamiliar with the vocabulary of El Nino or climate change.

But climate experts say the weather unpredictability in 2006/7 here was due to what is known as a "moderate El Nino year".

El Nino effect

El Nino is a warming of the central and eastern parts of the Pacific Ocean, which generally occurs every four to seven years and is considered responsible for disruptive weather patterns around the globe. It is blamed for the drought this year in nearby Australia which is the worst in a century.

Guide to El Nino and La Nina

A report by the aid agency Care International in March warned that the combination of failed crops and limited water access caused by El Nino had triggered a "humanitarian crisis" in the area. El Nino had contributed to a "serious decline in child nutritional status".

Some computer models have suggested that an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will increase the frequency and intensity of El Ninos. However, other models predict little or no change in how El Ninos occur.

Whatever the truth, officials at the Indonesian environment ministry are clearly worried that in the future the climate could become more unpredictable and cause more extreme weather events.

A detailed study released in June by the World Bank and the UK's Department for International Development concluded that as "an archipelago, Indonesia is very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change".

Food security, the report said, was "perhaps the largest concern".

"One of our urgent priorities," says Sulistyowati, assistant deputy minister for climate change impact control, "is better equipment for our weather stations to give accurate forecasts."

This, she said, would help farmers to know when to plant.

Aid projects

It is not all doom and gloom in West Timor. Various aid agencies are working with local health officials to reduce long-term malnutrition there.

Aureliana, for example, is one of 500 villagers receiving training from the development agency Oxfam in growing vegetables like tomatoes and water spinach to diversify her family's food intake and income.

For the moment though, Aurelia's kitchen at the back of her wooden home is virtually bare.

She is reluctant to show it, but all you can see are a few bunches of maize hanging from the roof and some rice stacked in one corner. "Maybe it will last us until October", she says.

Worrying times are ahead.

"We are very concerned about what we call the 'hunger gap months' from October onwards," says Yanne Tamonob, Oxfam's local malnutrition project manager.