Indonesia Fires Intensify as 'Unprecedented' El Niño Builds
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- Indonesia is experiencing wildfires likely amplified by a building Super El Niño, with blazes burning on Borneo and in West and Central Kalimantan, causing school closures and sending smoke into Singapore and Malaysia.
- Mark Parrington at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts said current fire emissions are, for this time of year, comparable to previous big El Niño years — and the fire season is just beginning.
- During the 1997-98 El Niño, Indonesian wildfires emitted as much as 2.5 gigatonnes of CO2, roughly a third of annual global fossil fuel emissions at the time, while the 2015 El Niño fires emitted an estimated 1.5 gigatonnes.
- The UK Met Office is forecasting Pacific sea surface temperatures exceeding 3°C above normal around October, surpassing the >2°C anomalies recorded in 1997 and 2015.
- Adam Scaife at the Met Office called the developing event "unprecedented," saying he has never seen an El Niño signal this intense in forecasts.
- Peat layers beneath Indonesian rainforests store vast amounts of carbon; once forests are cleared, the dried peat burns underground and is extremely difficult to extinguish.
- Forecasters warn next year could see particularly intense fires in the Amazon and parts of North America as well.
Why it matters: The Met Office forecasts an unprecedented El Niño that would push Indonesian fires toward the 1997-98 record of 2.5 gigatonnes of CO2 — a single-season pulse equivalent to roughly a third of annual global fossil fuel emissions at the time — driving a sharp jump in atmospheric CO2 and devastating air quality across Southeast Asia.
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