Recent Active Fires in Indonesia’s Southern Papua Province Caused by El Niño Conditions

Abstract

This study was conducted to identify the fire weather conditions needed to assess future peatland fires under climate change. Recent peatland fires in Indonesia have resulted in globally significant environmental impacts. Nevertheless, diurnal fire weather in the peatlands has not been clarified. The objective of this study was to determine the fire weather conditions needed to assess future peatland fires under climate change. An analysis of fire weather using diurnal weather data during the most active fire period in 2015 showed a strong wind speed of 35.7 km h−1 at 3 p.m. that continued to blow for about two weeks, suggesting that peatland fires in 2015 became very active under these very strong wind conditions. The temperature increase rate (ΔT), the RH decrease rate (ΔRH), and the wind speed increase rate (ΔWS) during morning hours from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. were 2.3 °C h−1, −10.3% h−1, and 5.2 (km h−1) h−1 respectively. These weather parameters will be used to predict occurrences of active fires. The results of this report may help to predict fire activity under high temperatures in the future based on predictions of global warming made by other researchers. The rapid air temperature increase rate from morning will be useful for fire forecast in Papua.

Keywords

• Papua
• peatland fires
• fire weather condition
• diurnal weather
• sea breeze
• El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)