Malaysia has experienced an unusual run of wet weather in recent months, with almost daily thunderstorms triggering car alarms and lightning strikes setting buildings alight.

The warmer weather is forcing more moisture into the air and leading to the storms, the Star daily quoted environmentalist Gurmit Singh as saying.

"These are the chain reactions resulting from the changes in weather as it is all part of rising temperature or global warming," said Singh, executive director of the independent Centre for Environment, Technology and Development Malaysia.

Statistics from the Malaysian Meteorological Department show an increase of 0.8 degrees Celsius in the country's average temperature from 1970 to 2005, when it was 27.3 C (81.1 F), said the newspaper.

"It has been accepted that the greenhouse gases effect can cause severe weather becoming more severe," said the department's director-general Yap Kok Seng.

The heavy rain is creating big traffic jams in the capital, with roads deluged by flash floods and drains overflowing, while accidents are on the increase.

Last week lightning killed two men and injured two others during heavy rain, while a family was evacuated from their Kuala Lumpur home after it was struck and caught on fire.

A lightning strike on Friday on a fuel storage tank in a port depot in Malaysia's south triggered a spectacular inferno that took hours to contain.

Singh said the climatic extremes were also related to the cyclical La Nina, a weather phenomenon that affects the sea surface temperature in the central and eastern tropical Pacific.

Yap, who also believed the weather could be caused by cyclical changes, said more rain was expected and warned of worsening conditions.

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