admin 
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 Nino” 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. While El Nino 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 Nino index has already exceeded 2015 levels, Indonesian authorities said, while Columbia University climate scientist James Hansen has described this year’s El Nino data as “off the charts”.
Mean global sea surface temperatures, normally at their highest in March and April, rose to a record-breaking 21.1C on August 22, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service. 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.
According to Copernicus’ Fire Emissions Watch, carbon emissions from Indonesian fires in the last seven days reached 17.1mn metric tonnes, 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. 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.
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.
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.
