By David Stanway
SINGAPORE, Aug 31 (Reuters) – As Indonesia’s wildfire season intensifies, authorities are on high alert as they work to contain the damage and avoid the devastation that hit the archipelago in 2015, the last time it faced such severe “super-El Niño” weather conditions.
Indonesia has deployed cloud-seeding and firefighting aircraft in an effort to prevent fire and smoke from spreading in several key “hotspots”, particularly in five provinces on Borneo island, home to vast stretches of fire-prone peatland.
WHAT ROLE IS EL NIÑO PLAYING?
While El Niño is not a direct cause of fires, it serves as a catalyst, Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency chief told Reuters, with the additional heat and dryness enabling them to spread more quickly.
The El Niño index has already exceeded 2015 levels, Indonesian authorities said, while Columbia University climate scientist James Hansen has described this year’s El Niño data as “off the charts”.
Mean global sea surface temperatures, normally at their highest in March and April, rose to a record-breaking 21.1 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) on August 22, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service.
HOW DOES INDONESIA COMPARE TO OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD?
Drought has caused a surge in wildfires across the Northern Hemisphere, driving up air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions throughout North America, Eurasia and even the Arctic.
In the United States, homes were destroyed in Nevada and Washington, and Canada was also forced to issue evacuation orders after a wildfire surge in July.
Belgium and Spain experienced their worst fires ever, and outbreaks destroyed hundreds of homes in southwest France. According to EU data, more than 680,000 hectares (1.68 million acres) of land have been burned in fires in Europe so far this year.
According to Copernicus’ Fire Emissions Watch, carbon emissions from Indonesian fires in the last seven days reached 17.1 million metric tons, 429% higher than the seasonal mean and second only to Russia.
Fire emission intensity in Indonesia stood at 1,302 kg/sq km, compared to 185 kg/sq km in Russia, the data showed.
HOW DO INDONESIA’S WILDFIRES COMPARE TO 2015?
Wildfires destroyed nearly 95,000 hectares of Indonesian land in July, nearly doubling the damage done in the previous six months, with average temperatures for the month at their highest in 35 years.
Hotspots have reached more than 9,000 in August, significantly higher than the 5,077 recorded in August 2015, though still well below the all-time monthly high of 17,302 in October of that year, according to the forestry ministry fire-monitoring service, Sipongi.
As yet, wildfire damage has not matched the devastation wreaked 11 years ago.
In 2015, Indonesian wildfires generated more daily carbon dioxide emissions than the whole of the EU, and later studies estimated that wildfire pollution caused more than 100,000 excess deaths throughout Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
WHY IS INDONESIA PRONE TO FIRE?
Despite crackdowns, burning forests to clear land for agriculture and other economic activities has been a common practice in Indonesia.
Deforestation has also put Indonesia at greater risk by lowering water tables and reducing soil moisture.
Fires are considered especially difficult to manage in Borneo, where vast stretches of peatland can sustain blazes underground for much longer and at lower temperatures.
After 2015, Indonesian authorities promised to focus more on preventing fires rather than putting them out. The government cracked down on law-breaking enterprises and promised to rehabilitate drained and degraded peatlands and restore water table levels.
Experts said this may have helped limit the scale of the fires so far this year.
(Reporting by David Stanway in Singapore; Additional reporting by Jakarta bureau; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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