Indonesia's 2026 Fires On Track to Match Worst Season This Century

Wildfires currently burning across Indonesia are on track to produce carbon emissions on a par with the country's most intense fire season this century, according to fire scientists tracking the data. The Global Fire Emissions Database shows that, as of September 7, fires in Indonesia had produced 76 million tonnes of carbon in 2026, putting this year on a similar trajectory to 2015, when fires burned 2.6 million hectares of land and released a total of 333 million tonnes of carbon.

Dr. Guido van der Werf, a researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, said the fires are "more or less on track" to reach the levels seen in 2015, and that parts of the country, including the eastern province of Papua, are "burning more than they've ever burned." This year's fires are occurring during an El Nino, a naturally occurring climate phenomenon linked to Pacific Ocean temperatures that periodically drives up temperatures and dries out land in Indonesia. Scientists project that this El Nino, which began in June and is expected to last into 2027, will be one of the most intense on record.

Dr. Mark Parrington of the Copernicus Climate Change Service said Indonesia normally sees fire during its August-to-November dry season, but "nowhere near the scale that we've seen this year, or indeed any of the previous El Nino years." Dr. Nisa Novita, a peatland specialist at the Indonesian environmental group Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara, said El Nino "does not directly cause most fires" but acts as a "major amplifier," making fires easier to ignite, spread faster and harder to control, particularly on land cleared and drained for agriculture and palm oil plantations.

Novita said Indonesia's fires are especially emissions-intensive because of its large tropical peatland ecosystem; when peatlands are drained for farming, the water table drops and the dry peat becomes highly flammable and can smolder underground. Peatland restoration efforts introduced after Indonesia's catastrophic 1997-98 and 2015 fire seasons have been credited with reducing fires during the 2019 El Nino, but Indonesia's official peatland restoration agency was dissolved last year. Van der Werf said it remains unclear how much those restoration efforts have reduced this year's fires, noting that while Sumatra has had a quieter fire season, Papua is not.