Super El Niño Could Drive Indonesian Wildfire CO2 Above 2.5 Gigatonnes
Updated
Updated · New Scientist · Aug 21
Super El Niño Could Drive Indonesian Wildfire CO2 Above 2.5 Gigatonnes
3 articles · Updated · New Scientist · Aug 21
Summary
Met Office forecasts Pacific warming could top 3°C above normal by October, raising the risk that Indonesia’s fire season produces emissions on par with or above past major El Niño years.
Mark Parrington of Copernicus said current fire emissions are already unusually high for this point in the season, with smoke readings matching levels previously seen only in El Niño years.
Borneo, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan are already burning, and haze has shut schools while spreading into Singapore and Malaysia.
Indonesia’s peatlands make the threat especially severe: drained peat ignites in hot, dry weather, stores vast carbon and can burn underground for long periods.
Past strong El Niños drove 2.5 gigatonnes of CO2 from Indonesian fires in 1997-98 and 1.5 gigatonnes in 2015, and forecasters say a hotter world amplifies such impacts.
Can emergency peatland rewetting and cloud seeding truly extinguish these massive underground fires before Southeast Asia chokes on unprecedented toxic haze?
With over 154,000 hotspots already burning, will corporate land clearing during this Super El Niño push global carbon emissions past the tipping point?
Are major agricultural corporations quietly exploiting the extreme 2026 drought to clear protected rainforests under the guise of natural wildfires?