Indonesia's wildfire season may not end until early November, Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni told local media, because the rainy season is expected to arrive late. He urged people to stop using fire to clear land during the extended drought.
Peat fires are the hard ones
Many fires in Indonesia burn on peatland, where layers of dried plant matter can smoulder underground for weeks and reignite after surface flames are out. Those fires are difficult and expensive to extinguish, and they release large amounts of carbon dioxide and fine particulate matter. The smoke travels: in heavy fire years, haze has blanketed parts of Malaysia and Singapore and pushed air quality readings into unhealthy ranges.
Drought and cheap land clearing
This year's dry season has run longer than usual, leaving canals, wells and peat deposits dry. Farmers and plantation companies sometimes use fire because it is the cheapest way to clear land, even though regulations ban the practice. Provincial governments can declare emergency status to unlock extra resources, and authorities typically deploy water-bombing aircraft and cloud-seeding operations when fires spread beyond local control.
Why it matters beyond the region
Studies have estimated that Indonesia's 2015 peat fires released more carbon in a few months than the annual emissions of many industrialised countries. That is why the country's fire seasons are tracked by climate researchers as closely as they are by local agencies. The fires also damage health in the short term, sending children and older people to clinics with respiratory complaints, and they destroy habitat for species such as orangutans.
The immediate question is the weather. If the rains arrive in November as forecast, the fire count should fall quickly. If they slip again, the burning could stretch deeper into the year and push haze back across the region's borders.