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Headline: Borneo Burns: Forest Fires Hit Indonesia

Caption: After several years of comparatively quiet fire seasons, Indonesia saw the return of intense, smoky fires in 2023, in part due to the return of El Niño. This image shows smoke from fires burning on the island of Borneo, in the Indonesian provinces of South and Central Kalimantan. It was acquired by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensor on NASA’s Terra satellite on October 2, 2023. By that date, fire had burned around 267,900 hectares (662,000 acres) since the start of the year, surpassing the area burned during all of 2022. Burning in Indonesia often begins as farmers clear land for crops or grazing animals. Fire that escapes control in Borneo and Sumatra can become difficult to extinguish because of the islands’ large deposits of peat—a soil-like mixture of partly decayed plant material that can fuel smoldering fires for months. Fires generally correspond with Indonesia’s dry season, which runs from June into December, with fire activity peaking from August into October. This year, scientists think that the natural climate phenomenon El Niño has made the landscape even drier, priming it to burn. During El Niño years, rain that is normally centered over Indonesia and the far western Pacific shifts eastward into the central Pacific, causing parts of Indonesia to experience drought. “This El Niño has maybe been delayed in drying out the main burning regions,” said NASA and Columbia University scientist Robert Field. “But it is the simplest explanation for the drying, along with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole to the west.”

Keywords: climate change,el nino,feature,smoke,indonesia,forest fires,fires,Borneo

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