Indonesian fires now on a par with Brazil’s total annual emissions

Fires are raging across Indonesia, so far releasing almost as much carbon to the atmosphere as Brazil produces in a year, according tonew data from the World Resources Institute.

Standing at a staggering 1.6bn tonnes of greenhouse gases, emissions from Indonesia’s fires alone are already twice as high as those from the rest of economy combined, and have bumped Indonesia up from the sixth biggest emitting country to the fourth in just six weeks.

With the international community keeping close watch ahead of the Paris talks next month, here’s a summary of the state of play and some context on what it means for the climate.

‘Slash and burn’

Each year in Indonesia, fires typically burn from July to October when the land is dry. The country has long attracted the international spotlight because a large proportion of the fires are started deliberately to clear land for palm oil, used widely in food, cosmetics and household products.

Initially sanctionedby the government in the early 1980s, this is now illegal. However, it continues largely unpoliced. So far, 2015 has seen the second highest number of fires on record, with 117,878 fires currently burning,according to estimates by theGlobal Fire Emissions Database(GFED).

Active fires detected over Indonesia as of 29 Oct 2015. Source:Global Fire Emissions Database

Glossary

El Niño:Every five years or so, a change in the winds causes a shift to warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean - known as El Niño. Together with its cooler counterpart, La Niña, this is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is responsible for most of the fluctuations in temperature and rainfall patterns we see from one year to the next.

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El Niño:Every five years or so, a change in the winds causes a shift to warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean - known as El Niño. Together with…Read More

1997 holds the record for the highest number of fires in a single year, attributable in part to the hugeEl Niñothat peaked in December of that year.El Niñoisn’t the root causeof fires, but it reduces rainfall in the region, making the land drier andmore susceptibleto fire.

A climate issue

The rapidly-spreading fires arethreatening wildlife, including the iconic orangutan. Smoke from the fires hasclosed schools, causedflight cancellationsand affected an estimatedhalf a millionpeople with respiratory illnesses. Ten people are reported to have died as a result of the fires.

But there’s another problem. One with big consequences for the climate.

Indonesia is home to84%of Southeast Asia’s peatlands. It is also the world’s largest producer of palm oil, with52% of the global supply. That means a lot of the land earmarked to meet the growing demand for oil palm is thecarbon-richpeatlands, which, when burned or drained, release large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

You can see the heavy smoke from fires in Borneo in the satellite image below, taken on 19 October. The red dots represent individual fires, detected from space by the heat they give out.

Smoke from fires burning over Borneo on Oct 19th. Source:NASA Earth Observatory

Fourth highest emitter

Glossary

CO₂equivalent:温室气体可以表达的of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO₂e. For a given amount, different greenhouse gases trap different amounts of heat in the atmosphere, a quantity known as the global warming potential. Carbon dioxide equivalent is a way of comparing emissions from all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide.

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CO₂equivalent:温室气体可以表达的of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e. For a given amount, different greenhouse gases trap different amounts of heat in the atmosphere, a quantity known as…Read More

So far this year, Indonesian wildfires have released an estimated 1.6bn tonnes of CO2equivalent, according to theGFED.

Dr Guido van Werf, who runs the GFED, tells Carbon Brief the uncertainty associated with these figures could be up to 50%.

But, if correct, this figure suggests emissions from the Indonesian fires alone are on a par with the total emissions Brazil produces in a year from energy, agriculture and land use combined.

Infographic: How do greenhouse gases from the Indonesian fires compare with the world’s biggest emitting countries? By Rosamund Pearce for Carbon Brief

With emissions excluding land use ataround760 Mt CO2 equivalent, this year’s fires have already emitted more than twice the emissions from all Indonesia’s other sectors put together.

Together, this suggests Indonesia currently accounts for 3.4% of total annual global emissions (based on2012 figures), putting it above Russia and behind China, the US and India as the fourth largest emitting single country in the world.

Fire emissions from Indonesia as of 29 Oct 2015. Source:Global Fire Emissions Database

On some particularly fire-intensive days, emissions from the Indonesian fires have beenhigher thanthose from the whole of the US economy. The WRI analysis suggests this was true for 38 days out of the past 56. A separateBloomberg analysissuggests Indonesia’s daily fire emissions also exceeded total daily emissions from China on at least 14 days in the past two months.

Outlook

With emissions already staggeringly high, this year’s fire season isn’t over yet, say scientists.

The start of the rainy season usually extinguishes the fires, butscientists expect the strongEl Niñoto mean the rainy season arrives later than usual. Themost recent forecastis for below-normal rain for the next two weeks, as the yellow shapes across Indonesia in the maps below show.

Latest forecast showing lower-than-average rainfall expected over Indonesia for the next two weeks. Source:NOAA National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Center

There has, at least, beensome relief. An update this morning on the GFED says:

Most forecasts still indicate lower than average rainfall for the next weeks or months, but some rain has arrived and the number of active fire detections has dropped substantially since 26 October.

But the picture isn’t shifting dramatically just yet, saysDr Robert Field, a research scientist at Columbia University and NASA. He tells Carbon Brief:

Heavy rains have historically returned to the regions currently burning (southern Sumatra, south-central Kalimantan, Irian) in mid-November. There has recently been sporadic rain, but not enough to stop the fire and haze.

During the bigEl Niñoin 1997, Indonesian fires released 4.3bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, according to theGFED. A similar figure this year would see total annual emissions surpass those for India (基于2012年的数据), bumping Indonesia up another place to third behind China and the US in the list of highest emitters.

But Field thinks 1997 is likely to retain the top spot, given that the fire season got underway a month earlier than it did than this year.Dr David Gaveaufrom the Centre for International Forestry Research agrees, tells Carbon Brief:

2015 is tracking somewhere between 1997 and2006 [最近一年的El Niño]. 1997will likely remain worse in terms of drought and forest area burned.

A crisis in context

Indonesia isn’t the only place where fire is a problem.

The graph below from theGFEDshows how annual greenhouse gas emissions from different types of fires in Indonesia compare to other parts of the world.

The top panel shows that, globally, emissions from all types of fireshow a modest decreasesince 1997.Other regions also have higher total annual fire emissions than Indonesia.

Annual emissions from different types of fire across the world. Black bars represent those from peat fires. Source:GFED

Butthe type of fire is important in determining the climate impact, says van der Werf. He tells Carbon Brief:

Keep in mind emissions from most other countries are notnetcarbon dioxide emissions as in Indonesia. It is simply a natural cycle.

With most types of fire, carbon emissions tend to be re-absorbed by vegetation as it regrows. But burning peat is a net source of carbonbecause it releases CO2 that has been locked away for hundreds of years. And, as the black bars in the graphs above show, equatorial Asia is responsible for almost all global emissions from peatland fires.

Carbon monoxide in the atmosphere between 13-26 Oct 2015, showing the effects of Indonesian peat fires stretching from India to the Philippines. Source:NASA

So,are the Indonesian firesthe “worst climate crisis on the planet right now”, asparts of the mediahave dubbed them?

While van der Werf agrees the emissions from these fires are huge, they are still dwarfed by other global emissions sources such as fossil fuels and agriculture. He tellsScientific American:

I do think we will see the impact of these fires on the global carbon dioxide concentration, but in the end it is a minor source if you take the full picture into account. Everything is relative.

Prof Nancy Harris, research manager for Global Forest Watch at the Word Resources Institute, takes a different view, telling Carbon Brief:

On average, emissions from fires in Indonesia are less important for climate change than emissions resulting from the fossil fuels that drive our global economy. This year, however, the concentrated pulse of emissions arising from Indonesian fires in such a short period of time is almost unprecedented, and is occurring at a time when we are trying our hardest to find ways to limit emissions to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees.

Dr Fred Stolle, a senior scientist withWRI’s Forests Program, adds:

You see these enormous amount of greenhouse gases in such a short time only in disasters, like big wildfires in the USA or Australia or volcano eruptions.

Indonesia has the highest deforestation rate in the world, with land use and peat firesaccounting for 63%of emissions. Butwith the US and Europe bothmajor consumersof palm oil, the escalation in production (red bars below) is partly to satisfy the demand from the West.

The growth of oil palm production in Indonesia (red) and Malaysia (green) up to 2010. Source:Mudiyarso et al., (2010)

Indonesia haspledgedto reduce its emissions by 29-41% by 2030, compared to business as usual. As thisCarbon Brief articleexplains, this would amount topreventing any increase on recent levels,尽管区间的上端取决于矩形eiving international financial support.

The government says the 2030 emissions target will be met partly through “improved land use”, though details of how this will be achievedremain fuzzy.

As the fires continue to rage, it remains to be seen what the climate impact will be.El Niñois providing the conditions for the fires to proliferate, but while the root cause of the fires continues largely unfettered, the stark images and statistics make for a dramatic backdrop to the looming Paris talks, where a global deal to tackle emissions is due to be struck.

Main image:Thick grey smoke from forest fires across Indonesia on Sep 24th 2015, taken with theModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on the Terra satellite.