El Niño: Indonesia fire emissions in 2026 ‘on track’ to match record for this century
Wildfires currently burning large swathes of land in Indonesia are on track to produce emissions on a par with the… The post El Niño: Indonesia fire emissions in 2026 ‘on track’ to match record for this century appeared first on Carbon Brief .
Indonesia's ongoing wildfires are set to emit carbon on par with the country's most intense fire season in the current century, according to experts. As of September 7, the fires have emitted 76 million tonnes of carbon (MtC) in 2026. This puts 2026 on a similar trajectory as 2015, when the country experienced one of its worst fire seasons, burning 2.6 million hectares of land and generating 333MtC.
Dr Guido van der Werf, a researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, states that the current fires in Indonesia are "more or less on track" to reach levels seen in 2015. Certain regions, particularly the eastern province of Papua, are burning more than ever before. Indonesia has faced numerous emissions-intensive fires in the past, with the record 1997 fire season emitting carbon equivalent to 13-40% of all global fossil-fuel emissions that year.
A separate study found that the 2015 fires in Southeast Asia, primarily in Indonesia, released more CO2 emissions than the entire EU's fossil-fuel emissions that year. The severe haze caused by the fires has been linked to over 100,000 premature deaths across the region. These current fires are occurring during an intense El Niño year, a naturally occurring climate phenomenon linked to ocean temperatures in the Pacific.
This year's El Niño, which started in June and is expected to last into 2027, is one of the most significant on record, contributing to the extreme conditions that have fueled the Indonesian wildfires.
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