This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Thick smog has blanketed parts of Indonesia as the vast archipelago battles fires that have burned large swaths of Borneo and Sumatra for weeks. The hazardous smoke has led to an increase in respiratory problems, forced schools to close and drifted to neighboring countries including Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
Most of the fires are concentrated on the island of Borneo, home to vast tropical jungle that Indonesia shares with Brunei and Malaysia, as well as on Sumatra. So far this year, nearly 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of land have burned in Indonesia, according to an independent estimate from the Nusantara Atlas portal. Indonesia saw an uptick in carbon emissions since late July, and by the end of last month, levels were comparable to those in the previous El Niño years of 2015 and 2019, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) senior scientist Mark Parrington told AFP.
"We're seeing already now... really extreme fire emissions comparable to those previous strong El Niño years, and also the extent of the smoke and the haze and the air quality impacts," Parrington said. Fires in the archipelago released more than 23 million metric tons of carbon emissions between Aug. 28 and Sept. 3, according to CAMS' Fire Emission Watch portal. That was higher than the 20.7 million metric tons of emissions from fires over the same period in 2015, which was a strong El Niño year.
Analysts said the El Niño weather phenomenon, which the United Nations said this week could turn out to be the strongest in four decades, has contributed to drier conditions in Indonesia and made it easier for fires to spread. But slash-and-burn land-clearing practices also contributed to the damage, said David Gaveau, founder of the Nusantara Atlas. "El Niño does not ignite fires.
It creates the dry conditions that allow human-started fires to escape and become very large," he told AFP. The fires are difficult to extinguish because many occurred on peatlands, a wetland ecosystem with layers of partially decomposed organic material that becomes flammable when dry. Between January and August this year, more than 210,000 hotspots were detected in peatland areas across the country, according to NGO Pantau Gambut.
"Peat is a naturally wet ecosystem and stores large amounts of organic material. When peat is drained, this organic material is converted into fuel," Pantau Gambut spokesman Wahyu Perdana said. More than 5 million people across Borneo and Sumatra are directly exposed to the health risks from haze, Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono said last month.
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