JAKARTA: Wildfires that consumed vast swathes of Indonesia this year were driven largely by a strong El Nino, fuelled by climate change and decades of destruction of natural landscapes, researchers said on Friday.
El Nino was largely to blame for an extreme lack of rainfall in the Southeast Asian archipelago from July to October, reducing seasonal rainfall by about half, according to a report by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group.
Climate change contributed by driving up temperatures.
“Seasonal temperatures from August to October were dominated by climate change — primarily from the burning of fossil fuels — which made the seasonal heat about 1.6°C hotter,” the report said.
“Human-induced warming made these (fire-prone) atmospheric conditions about three times more likely as well as more intense.”
The researchers also pointed to deforestation and peatland drainage for agriculture, mining and logging as major contributors to the fire disaster.
Smoke from the wildfires made hundreds of thousands of people ill in Indonesia after they breathed in toxic haze, while many more in neighbouring countries were exposed to dangerously high air pollution levels.
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“Indonesia’s landscapes have changed dramatically over the last 30 years, with extensive peatland drainage and deforestation creating landscapes that can be extremely vulnerable to ignition,” said meteorologist Pramudhian Firdaus of the FLARE Wildfire Research group.
“These findings show how both emissions reductions and sustained forest and peatland protection are important in reducing future risk.”
Wildfires have burned through 2.88 million hectares so far in 2026, according to the Nusantara Atlas deforestation monitor.
The burned area — 18 times the size of London — increased by nearly a million hectares in a month.
The Indonesian government has neither confirmed nor rejected the figure, nor released its own estimate of the area burned since July.
Indonesia experiences fires every dry season, but this year’s blazes have been particularly severe.