THE smoke this year is not expected to be severe because the El Nino phenomenon that had resulted in dry weather in Kalimantan and Sumatra is “weak”, said weather expert Fredolin Tangang.

However, the severity of the transboundary smoke would also depend on Indonesia’s success in putting out peat fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra, said the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Centre for Earth Sciences and Environment chairman.

On July 31 Indonesia’s Coordinating Ministry for Human Development and Culture announced five provinces in the country had declared a land and forest emergency due to moderate to high risk of fire.

The five provinces are Riau, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and South Kalimantan.

“But going by the drought in Kalimantan and southern Sumatra, it will not be as bad as in 2015,” Tangang told The Malaysian Insight.

“Like I said, whether we’ll have prolonged haze or not is dependent on actions taken in Indonesia.”

August precipitation charts of Southeast Asia showed that it would be a very dry month for Kalimantan, he said.

The danger, he said, is that once forest fires start in the peatlands, they would be difficult to put out.

Tangang said only heavy rain would be able put out such fires “but that kind of rain will not come with the prolonged drought”.

“Normally during this time, rainfall is low in that region. With El Nino, it’s much lower or no rainfall at all.”

Tangang said the El Nino effect on the weather was subtle because this year’s ocean warming occurred far away in the central Pacific ocean.

“It’s unlike in 1997-1998 or 2015-2016 where warming took place in the central-eastern Pacific.”

Tangang said according to the US climate prediction centre El Nino “will die out in couple of months.”

The 2015 smoke is also known as the Southeast Asian haze as smoke from Indonesia reached as far as Cambodia and the Philippines.

In recent days, Malaysia is again affected by the smoke, which had caused the air to reach unhealthy levels in some parts of the country. – August 5, 2019.