Super El Niño Fuels Indonesia Wildfire Emissions — SkimNews
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- Mark Parrington at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts said Indonesia's current fire emissions are, for the time of year, "comparable to previous really big El Niño years."
- The 1997-1998 El Niño drove Indonesian wildfires that emitted roughly 2.5 gigatonnes of CO2 — equivalent to about a third of annual global fossil fuel emissions at the time.
- The 2015 El Niño, another strong event, saw Indonesian wildfires emit an estimated 1.5 gigatonnes of CO2; 1997 and 2015 remain the two strongest El Niño years on record.
- The UK Met Office is forecasting Pacific sea surface temperatures exceeding 3°C above normal around October — above the 2°C+ anomaly of 1997 and 2015 — with Adam Scaife calling it "unprecedented."
- Indonesian fires are currently burning on Borneo and in West and Central Kalimantan, with smoke causing school closures locally and spreading to Singapore and Malaysia.
- Peat layers beneath Indonesian rainforests store vast carbon, and once dried out by deforestation, can burn underground — making fires extremely difficult to extinguish.
Why it matters: Indonesian peat fires during past mega-El Niños dumped 1.5–2.5 gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, briefly spiking global emissions. With the Met Office forecasting Pacific anomalies above 3°C — exceeding 1997 and 2015 — and fire season still in its early stages, scientists say the setup mirrors those record-setting events.
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