Indonesia's wildfire risk can change dramatically from one year to another.
Some dry seasons remain relatively manageable. Others become much more dangerous, with fires spreading across forests, plantations, grasslands and peatlands. Understanding Indonesia's recurring wildfires and the haze crisis they create requires looking at both climate conditions and the human activities that make landscapes vulnerable to fire.
One of the climate patterns that can influence this risk is El Niño.
El Niño does not directly start a wildfire.
A lightning strike, agricultural burning, land clearing or another ignition source is still necessary.
What El Niño can do is make the landscape drier and more vulnerable to fire.
That distinction is essential.
The relationship can be summarized simply:
El Niño → drier conditions → less moisture → higher fire vulnerability → potentially larger and longer-lasting fires.
But the actual relationship is more complicated than that chain suggests.
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| Pacific Ocean Photo by Robert Boston on Unsplash |
What Is El Niño?
El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a recurring climate pattern involving changes in ocean temperatures and atmospheric circulation across the tropical Pacific.
Although the phenomenon originates in the Pacific, its effects can be felt far beyond the ocean.
For Indonesia, El Niño can influence rainfall patterns and contribute to unusually dry conditions in parts of the country.
The effects are not identical everywhere.
Some regions may experience stronger rainfall reductions than others, and the timing can vary.
That is why El Niño should be understood as a risk factor, rather than a guarantee of drought or wildfire.
Does El Niño Cause Indonesian Wildfires?
No.
This is one of the most important distinctions in understanding Indonesia's fire problem.
El Niño can create environmental conditions that are more favorable to fire, but it does not ignite vegetation by itself.
A wildfire requires an ignition source.
That source can be:
- deliberate land clearing
- agricultural burning
- accidental fires
- discarded embers
- machinery
- lightning
- other human activities
Therefore, saying “El Niño caused the fire” oversimplifies the problem.
A more accurate explanation is:
El Niño can increase fire danger by making landscapes drier, while human activity and other ignition sources determine whether fires actually begin.
Why Dry Conditions Matter
Fire needs fuel that can burn.
Moist vegetation is generally more difficult to ignite and sustain than dry vegetation.
When rainfall decreases over an extended period:
- vegetation loses moisture
- soil becomes drier
- grass and leaves become more flammable
- water levels decline
- peat can dry
- rivers and wetlands may shrink
- agricultural landscapes become more vulnerable
This creates a larger window in which an ignition can develop into a significant fire.
The same spark can have very different consequences depending on how wet the landscape is.
Why Peatlands Make the Problem Worse
Indonesia's peatlands are particularly important because their vulnerability depends heavily on water.
Healthy peatlands are naturally waterlogged.
When peatlands are drained, their water table can fall.
During prolonged dry conditions, the peat can become even drier.
This creates a dangerous combination:
drained peat + dry weather + ignition = high fire risk.
Once peat catches fire, it can smolder underground and become extremely difficult to extinguish.
This is one reason El Niño years can be especially concerning in degraded or drained peatland landscapes.
For a deeper explanation, see our related article:
Why Indonesia's Peatlands Keep Burning
El Niño Does Not Affect All of Indonesia Equally
Indonesia is an enormous archipelago.
Its climate varies considerably between islands and regions.
El Niño therefore does not produce one uniform national weather pattern.
Some regions can become substantially drier while others may experience smaller changes.
The timing also matters.
An El Niño event may develop gradually and interact with the seasonal cycle.
This means wildfire risk should be assessed using local information rather than assuming that every part of Indonesia faces exactly the same conditions.
El Niño and the Dry Season
The interaction between El Niño and Indonesia's normal dry season is particularly important.
Indonesia already experiences seasonal rainfall variation.
When El Niño contributes to reduced rainfall during a naturally dry period, the effects can become more significant.
The landscape may remain dry for longer.
This can extend the period during which fires can start and spread.
The danger is therefore not necessarily a single exceptionally hot day.
It is often the cumulative effect of prolonged dryness.
What Happens When the Rain Stops?
Imagine a landscape entering the dry season.
At first, there may be little obvious change.
After weeks without significant rainfall, however, moisture gradually declines.
Vegetation dries.
Small fires become easier to sustain.
Water levels in drainage systems fall.
Peat begins to lose moisture.
After a longer dry period, the landscape can become increasingly vulnerable.
This is why fire danger can increase gradually rather than appearing suddenly.
Why Consecutive Dry Days Matter
A single dry day rarely creates a major wildfire crisis.
A sequence of dry days can be much more important.
The longer rainfall remains below normal, the more opportunity the landscape has to lose moisture.
This is why fire-weather monitoring often considers several variables rather than temperature alone.
Useful indicators include:
- rainfall
- relative humidity
- temperature
- wind
- soil moisture
- vegetation dryness
- peat water levels
Together, these variables provide a better picture of fire danger.
El Niño and Fire Weather
Weather conditions can influence how quickly a fire spreads after ignition.
Dry vegetation provides fuel.
Low humidity can help that fuel remain dry.
Wind can move flames and embers.
High temperatures can increase evaporation.
When several of these conditions occur together, a small fire can become much more difficult to contain.
El Niño can influence the background climate conditions, but local weather determines how dangerous a particular day may be.
This distinction is important for operational fire management.
The Role of Human Land Use
Climate is only one side of Indonesia's wildfire problem.
Land use can determine how vulnerable a landscape becomes before dry weather arrives.
For example, drainage can make peatlands more flammable.
Deforestation can alter vegetation and local environmental conditions.
Agricultural expansion can create additional ignition opportunities.
Land clearing can introduce fire into dry landscapes.
This means two regions experiencing similar weather may have very different levels of wildfire risk.
A healthy, wet ecosystem can be considerably more resistant to fire than a degraded, drained landscape.
Why El Niño and Land Degradation Can Reinforce Each Other
The relationship can become a feedback loop.
Consider this sequence:
Land degradation → lower moisture resilience → El Niño-driven dryness → increased fire risk → fire and smoke → further ecosystem degradation.
Once a landscape is damaged, it can become more vulnerable to future fires.
Repeated burning can alter vegetation.
Repeated drainage can reduce peatland resilience.
This means preventing the first major fire can be much easier than managing a landscape that has entered a cycle of degradation and repeated burning.
El Niño and Indonesia's 2015 Fire Crisis
Indonesia's 2015 fire season is frequently cited as an example of how climate conditions and land-use practices can combine to produce severe wildfire and haze conditions.
A strong El Niño occurred that year, while extensive fires affected parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan.
The event produced severe air pollution and widespread regional haze.
The lesson from 2015 is not that El Niño alone caused the disaster.
Rather, it demonstrated how a strong climate signal can amplify vulnerabilities created by land management and human ignition.
What About the 2019 Fire Season?
The 2019 fire season provides another important example.
Indonesia experienced extensive forest and land fires, including fires affecting peatlands.
Again, the underlying causes were not simply climatic.
Land use, fire practices, vegetation conditions and weather all interacted.
This pattern is important because it shows that Indonesia's fire problem cannot be reduced to a single variable.
Climate can amplify risk.
But governance and land management determine how vulnerable the landscape is when climate conditions become unfavorable.
Why 2026 Is Important
The 2026 fire season has again demonstrated the importance of separating climate conditions from ignition and land management.
The year has been associated with unusually severe fire and haze conditions across parts of Indonesia, with recent reporting describing the situation as one of the country's worst fire seasons in more than a decade.
At the same time, fire activity has varied considerably between regions and from day to day.
That variation matters.
A climate pattern may create a broad background risk, but local rainfall, land condition, ignition sources and firefighting capacity determine what actually happens on the ground.
A Warmer Climate Could Complicate Fire Risk
El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon.
Climate change is a separate issue.
But the two can interact.
A warmer atmosphere can increase evaporative demand and intensify the effects of dry conditions in some regions.
This means that future wildfire risk cannot be understood only by asking whether an El Niño event occurs.
Researchers and policymakers also need to consider:
changing temperatures
rainfall variability
drought duration
soil moisture
peatland condition
land-use change
fire management
The future may therefore involve more complicated fire-risk patterns rather than simply “more El Niño years.”
Can Indonesia Predict Wildfire Risk?
Indonesia has increasingly sophisticated systems for monitoring weather, vegetation and fire activity.
Agencies can combine:
- satellite observations
- rainfall forecasts
- hotspot monitoring
- weather stations
- vegetation data
- peatland water-level measurements
- fire-danger indices
These systems can help identify periods of elevated risk.
But prediction is not the same as certainty.
A high fire-danger forecast means conditions are favorable for fire.
It does not mean a fire will definitely occur.
Early Warning Is More Valuable Than Late Response
The earlier authorities identify elevated fire risk, the more opportunities they have to act.
Before fires begin, authorities can:
- increase patrols
- monitor vulnerable landscapes
- prepare firefighting equipment
- check water availability
- protect peatland areas
- restrict high-risk burning
- strengthen community fire teams
- prepare health services
- communicate risks to the public
These actions are usually less expensive than responding to a large-scale wildfire emergency.
What Can Communities Do?
Local communities are often the first people to notice smoke or small fires.
Community-based fire prevention can therefore play an important role.
Useful measures include:
- reporting fires quickly
- avoiding uncontrolled burning
- monitoring dry areas
- protecting water sources
- maintaining firebreaks
- participating in local fire-prevention programs
- following official fire-risk warnings
Community participation is especially important in remote regions where government response times may be longer.
What Should Land Managers Do?
Companies and land managers operating in fire-prone areas have a particular responsibility.
Before a high-risk dry period, they can:
- inspect drainage systems
- maintain firebreaks
- prepare firefighting equipment
- monitor concession boundaries
- train emergency teams
- restrict high-risk activities
- maintain adequate water supplies
- establish rapid-response procedures
Prevention should begin before the landscape becomes critically dry.
Why Fire Danger Is Not the Same as Fire Activity
This distinction is useful when reading wildfire statistics.
Fire danger describes how favorable conditions are for fire.
Fire activity describes what fires are actually occurring.
Burned area describes how much land has been affected.
Air pollution describes the atmospheric consequences.
These are connected but different measurements.
A year can have extremely high fire danger without experiencing catastrophic fires if ignition is limited and prevention works effectively.
Conversely, a landscape with moderate weather risk can still experience serious fires if extensive ignition occurs.
The El Niño Lesson
The most important lesson is simple:
El Niño is an amplifier, not the whole explanation.
It can make landscapes drier.
It can reduce peat moisture.
It can lengthen periods of fire vulnerability.
But whether those conditions become a wildfire disaster depends heavily on what happens on the ground.
That includes land-use decisions, fire practices, ecosystem condition, enforcement and preparedness.
How Indonesia Can Reduce El Niño-Related Fire Risk
Indonesia cannot prevent El Niño.
But it can reduce the vulnerability of its landscapes.
The most important strategies include:
Protect peatlands
Keep peat wet and prevent unnecessary drainage.
Reduce uncontrolled burning
Develop practical alternatives for land preparation and agricultural management.
Improve land-use planning
Avoid placing highly flammable land uses in vulnerable ecosystems.
Strengthen early warning
Combine climate forecasts with local fire-danger monitoring.
Prepare before drought
Position equipment, personnel and water resources before conditions become critical.
Restore degraded ecosystems
Rewetting and ecological restoration can increase landscape resilience.
Improve enforcement
Illegal burning and irresponsible land management need effective accountability.
Support communities
Local people need practical and economically viable alternatives to risky fire practices.
El Niño Should Change the Timing of Prevention
One of the biggest mistakes in wildfire management is waiting until smoke appears.
If forecasts indicate elevated drought risk, prevention should begin immediately.
The sequence should be:
forecast → prepare → monitor → prevent → respond.
Not:
fire → smoke → emergency → firefighting.
This shift from reactive to preventive management can significantly reduce the potential scale of a fire disaster.
The Bigger Picture
Indonesia's wildfire risk sits at the intersection of climate and human decisions.
El Niño can alter rainfall patterns.
Land management determines how much moisture remains in the landscape.
Human activity provides many potential ignition sources.
Fire management determines how quickly an ignition is contained.
And atmospheric conditions determine where the smoke ultimately travels.
No single factor explains the entire problem.
That is why blaming El Niño alone misses the bigger picture.
Conclusion
El Niño can make Indonesia's landscapes drier and increase the conditions under which wildfires become more difficult to control.
But El Niño does not light the match.
The severity of a wildfire season depends on what happens when climate conditions meet land use, ecosystem health and human activity.
That distinction offers an important opportunity.
Indonesia cannot control the Pacific Ocean.
But it can control many of the conditions that determine how vulnerable its landscapes become.
Healthy peatlands can hold water.
Better land management can reduce ignition opportunities.
Early warning can provide more time to respond.
Strong community participation can stop small fires from becoming large ones.
And effective prevention can reduce the amount of smoke that eventually reaches people's homes.
The real challenge is therefore not simply predicting the next El Niño.
It is making Indonesia's landscapes resilient enough that the next dry period does not automatically become the next wildfire crisis.