JAKARTA: Wildfires that consumed vast swathes of Indonesia this year were driven largely by a strong El Nino, fuelled by climate change and decades of destruction of natural landscapes, researchers said on Friday.
El Nino was largely to blame for an extreme lack of rainfall in the Southeast Asian archipelago from July to October, reducing seasonal rainfall by about half, according to a report by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group.
"Seasonal temperatures from August to October were dominated by climate change — primarily from the burning of fossil fuels — which made the seasonal heat about 1.6°C hotter," the report said.
"Human-induced warming made these (fire-prone) atmospheric conditions about three times more likely as well as more intense."
