So far yet so close to Paris, El Nino riles Indonesians

Indonesian soldiers wait for water pressure to return as they try to put out a peatland fire near Palangkaraya, central Kalimantan, Indonesia on Oct. 28. © Reuters

As global leaders gathered in Paris on Monday for the United Nations-sponsored summit on climate change, matters at the heart of the summit and global rallies demanding action from leaders were playing out on the other side of the world, in rain-soaked Indonesia.

     Southeast Asia's largest country has been coping with torrential rain since October, confounding the dire warnings from climate experts that, with the convergence of a drought-inducing El Nino phenomenon, the haze from peat fires across parts of Southeast Asia could continue until the end of the year.

After the downpours began, the smoldering fires that defied aerial water-bombing and the efforts of thousands of firefighters -- and prompted President Joko Widodo to dash home from his first U.S. visit as Indonesian leader on Oct. 28 -- were eventually extinguished.

     For more than two months from early September, the Indonesian regions of Sumatra and Kalimantan were blanketed in choking smoke, to the extent that the government was considering evacuating women and their children on an armada of naval landing craft. Smog had also drifted across the region, causing disruption in neighboring countries.

     As usual when these seasonal fires break out, Jakarta's politicians and other interested parties remained strangely unaffected -- until the day Widodo left for the U.S. The extra sense of crisis was undoubtedly a reason for his sudden cancellation of a planned visit to California's Silicon Valley -- and a factor in his decision to give the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila a miss.

     Now, Indonesians, Singaporeans and Malaysians are wondering whether they can breathe easily again. They are also wondering what happened to El Nino, which was supposed to be as strong as the one which devastated the region back in 1997-98.

Temporary reprieve

The news is not good for Indonesia -- which with record emissions this year as a result of the fires has moved up some notches to become the world's third largest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind the U.S. and China. If the haze blanketing the country and its neighbors has gone for now, it does not mean that El Nino has as well. On the contrary, it is becoming even more powerful, evidenced by some of the highest water temperatures ever recorded in the Indian Ocean by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

     Climatologists are now hastening to point out that the pre-monsoon rains we have just seen -- up to 50-100cm falling in one week in early November over many parts of Indonesia -- were actually expected. But there is a big difference, they point out, between climate and weather.

     "The difficulty for us is the forecast for the rainfall anomaly was very negative -- and still is -- but less than normal is not the same as no rain," says Guido van der Werf, earth scientist at Amsterdam University. "I guess we can say Indonesia has been relatively lucky."