Super El Niño-fueled fires destroyed huge tracts of this country before. They’re happening again

By Laura Paddison, CNN

(CNN) — Wildfires are ripping across parts of Indonesia, destroying precious peatland and smothering the country in a toxic smoke so thick, people are struggling to breathe. With months of wildfire season still remaining, experts warn this could end up one of the country’s worst.

Blazes have been raging for many weeks, with parts of Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo among the hardest hit. Flights have been delayed, parks shut and thousands of schools closed as reports of asthma cases and respiratory infections soar. Authorities have deployed more than 50 aircraft for both cloud-seeding — the attempt to artificially simulate rain — and water-bombing operations, according to Reuters.

Indonesia is no stranger to wildfires; they are an annual event. But this year, the arrival of what’s expected to be a “super” El Niño — a supercharged version of the natural climate pattern which tends to bring bone dry conditions to the country — has set the stage for unusually intense blazes.

A previous super El Niño in 2015 fueled catastrophic fires, which incinerated around 2.6 million hectares — an area roughly the size of Massachusetts — cost the country as much as $28 billion and may have caused 100,000 premature deaths across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

There are fears this fire season could rival that intensity, as the current El Niño, which arrives in a world already heated by human-caused climate change, is shaping up to be historically strong. “The magnitude of the 2026 fire season is currently very similar to that of 2015,” said Nisa Novita, a peatlands researcher at YKAN, an Indonesian conservation non-profit.

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Already the fires have eaten through more than 200,000 hectares of land and the fire season is likely to continue into October and November. Over 23,000 “fire hotspots” have been detected by satellites in the last eight months, according to BKMG, the Indonesian government agency for meteorology, climatology and geophysics. This means “2026 is already surpassing 2015 in terms of fire activity,” a BKMG spokesperson said.

It’s a catastrophe for this vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands. Indonesia is a biodiversity hotspot, home to critically endangered orangutans, Sumatran tigers and rhinos. It also contains nearly 40% of the world’s tropical peatland, water-logged ecosystems that lock up vast amounts of planet-heating carbon. “These ecosystems are essentially storing ancient carbon beneath our feet,” Novita said.

The problem is that when peatland is drained or degraded then exposed to drought, it turns into a “vast reservoir of ready fuel,” said Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at Imperial College London. When they burn, they release massive amounts of planet-heating pollution.

Huge stretches of peatland in Indonesia have been cleared and drained for commercial plantations, including those that produce palm oil, an ingredient used in a slew of products from noodles to toothpaste.

“By draining away the water … companies leave the previously fireproof landscape like a ticking carbon time bomb,” said Belgis Habiba, a forest campaigner from Greenpeace Indonesia.

Humans are usually the ones who set off this bomb, through activities such as burning land to prepare it for agriculture and plantations. But El Niño amplifies the flames by prolonging dry conditions, lowering water levels in the peatland and turning plants into tinder.

El Niño “does not necessarily create every fire, but it greatly intensifies existing fires and allows them to spread more easily,” said Herry Purnomo, Indonesia Country Program Director at the Center for International Forestry Research, a non-profit research organization.

Tropical peatland blazes are among the most dangerous on Earth. NASA describes them as a contender for the “apex predator” of fires because they burn slowly, produce vast amounts of pollution and are very difficult to extinguish, often smoldering underground as so-called zombie fires that refuse to die.

“Peat fires can persist for weeks or longer and can reignite if conditions remain dry,” said Dominick Spracklen, a professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions at the University of Leeds.

Indonesia’s fire emissions last month were the highest recorded in August for the past 24 years, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change service.

Wildfire smoke rapidly increases tiny and very dangerous particles of air pollution called PM2.5, which can travel deep inside people’s lungs causing heart and breathing problems. More than 50,000 respiratory infections have been linked to the fires so far, according to Indonesia’s Health Ministry.

Plumes of smoke have also drifted into the neighboring countries of Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. Malaysia’s health ministry has reported asthma cases rising by 259%, according to local media.

“These fires demonstrate that wildfires are not a localized challenge – their impacts can extend hundreds of miles from the source,” said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

Over the past three weeks, the fires have released nearly 49 million tons of carbon, more than the same period in 2015, Copernicus data shows. And it’s a vicious cycle. “Emissions worsen global warming and climate change, which in turn can increase the frequency and severity of drought and fire conditions,” Purnomo said.

While Purnomo believes the strength of El Niño brings “legitimate concerns,” he doesn’t think the impacts will reach the catastrophic levels of 2015. “Indonesia has learned important lessons and strengthened prevention, monitoring, and response measures,” he said.

But, experts warn, with months left of fire season, there are big fears. “The rainy session might be the only way to stop them,” Rein said — and that is likely many weeks away.

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