Indonesian forest fires on track to emit more CO2 than (total annual carbon output of the) UK
Source: The Guardian
As well as fuelling global warming, the thick smoke choking cities in the region is likely to cause the premature deaths of more than 100,000 people in the region and is also destroying vital habitats for endangered orangutans and clouded leopards.
New drone video footage from Greenpeace from around the Gunung Palung national park in Kalimantan shows the peat fires smouldering underground, as well as flames burning down trees, and the thick haze they produce.
There have been almost 10,000 fires in the last month across Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) and Sumatra, with the drifting smoke also provoking protests from neighbouring Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
The fires, mostly started deliberately and illegally to clear forest for paper and palm oil production, are on track to match the worst ever year of 1997. As in that year, the region is currently experiencing a strong El Niño climate phenomenon. This creates drought conditions in Indonesia, exacerbating years of draining of peatlands, and creating tinderbox conditions.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/07/indonesian-forest-fires-on-track-to-emit-more-co2-than-uk
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/oct/07/indonesias-forest-fires-threaten-orangutan-habitat-video
Shocking drone footage captured by Greenpeace field researchers shows extensive peat and forest fires burning in Indonesia. Greenpeace’s footage was shot around the edge of the Gunung Palung national park, a major reservoir of biodiversity in Indonesia. It shows fires burning in the deep peat surrounding the national park and in nearby palm oil concessions – the result of decades of illegal logging and deforestation for oil palm and pulp plantations
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Response to Turborama (Original post)
Experts say that along with dramatic global coral bleaching, thousands of fires across Indonesia represents the next sign of an intensifying global El Niño event. And the consequences, in this case, could affect the entire globe’s atmosphere.
That’s because a large number of Indonesia’s currently raging fires are consuming ancient stores of carbon-rich peat, which is found in wetlands featuring organic layers full of dead and partially decomposed plant life.
This year, the very smoky peat burning has been simply massive — the fires are estimated to have caused $ 14 billion in damage so far, and are causing hazardous air conditions in much of the area, including nearby Singapore. Millions of people have been affected, and 120,000 have sought medical treatment for respiratory illnesses, according to Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters.
Indeed, the 2015 Indonesian fire season has so far featured a stunning 94,192 fires. That’s more Indonesian fires than at the same time in 2006, a banner year both for fires and also for their carbon emissions to the atmosphere.
Those emissions are more than large enough to have global consequences. Indeed, according to recent calculations by Guido van der Werf, a researcher at VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands who keeps a database that tracks the global emissions from wildfires, this year’s Indonesian fires had given off an estimated 995 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions as of Oct. 14.
That’s just shy of a billion metric tons, or a gigaton.
More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/10/15/how-indonesias-staggering-fires-are-making-global-warming-worse/
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