Sunday, July 10, 2016

The cost of Indonesia’s 2015 fires...

Indonesian forest fires, fanned by an extended drought associated with El Nino, delivered more carbon emissions into the atmosphere than the entire European Union, an astounding 11.3 million tonnes per day against 8.9 million tonnes for the EU, according to a new study.

The study, written by nine climate scientists from Kings College London in collaboration with the Center for International Forestry Research and published in the journal Scientific Reports, examined burning in Sumatra and Kalimantan, which released a total of 857 million tonnes into the atmosphere from September to October, some 97 percent of all the country’s emissions over the period.

Two million hectares of forest went up in smoke last year, with dozens of people killed and smoke blanketing Southeast Asia from Singapore to Cambodia to Vietnam and the Philippines. The fires are estimated to have cost billions of dollars worth of damage.

The report, written in extremely dense technical language, concludes that “Our fire carbon emission estimate for September-October 2015 represents the largest seen over the Maritime southeast Asia region since 1997, but still it is only a quarter of the most recent estimate for the September-October period of that El Niño year.” Apparently many of the burned areas had been burned before, consuming less fuel per unit area. Full story...

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  5. Indonesian fires worsen, Singapore smog sets record...
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