Peatland Fire Weather Conditions in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

Peatland fires in Central Kalimantan emit thick smoke and large amounts of greenhouse gases and have an impact on the environment globally, but studies on fire weather have not been carried out due to lack of diurnal weather data. The aim of this study is to identify the fire weather conditions during active fires that is needed to mitigate future occurrences of peat fires in Indonesia. The available diurnal weather data was used to analyze the fire weather conditions. Based on meteorological data on active fires (11 days), there was a significant increase in air temperature due to the sea breeze that started blowing in the morning. The average values for the 11-day period around 15:00 are a maximum air temperature of 36 °C, minimum humidity of 37%, wind speed of 21 km h−1, and a rate of increase of 2.7 °C h−1 from 8:00. The difference in sea and land temperatures causes strong winds to blow and triggers an increase in land temperatures. The results of this report can help predict fire activity at high temperatures in the future based on global warming predictions made by other researchers. The rapid rate of increase in air temperature from the morning will be useful in anticipating fires in Central Indonesia.

Recent Active Fires in Indonesia’s Southern Papua Province Caused by El Niño Conditions

“…However, we are able to analyze the fire weather conditions in three peatlands in Indonesia by using the available hourly data. Two reports on peatland fires in Sumatra and Central Kalimantan are already published [19,20]. The main results of fire weather conditions in this report are compared below.…”

“…We are now analyzing fire weather conditions for four major peatland fires in Indonesia. They are in Southern Papua, Central Kalimantan [20], and South and North Sumatra [19]. We found four weather stations which have diurnal weather data near four major peatlands.…”

“…In Central Kalimantan, the wind speed increased from 4 km h −1 at 9 a.m. to 28 km h −1 at 4 p.m. on 22 September 2015, and the average ∆WS was 3.4 (km h −1 ) h −1 [20]. In South Sumatra, the wind speed increased from 9 km h −1 at 7:30 a.m. to 19 km h −1 at 9:30 on 30 August 2015, and the average ∆WS was 5 (km h −1 ) h −1 [19].…”

“…As shown in Figures 6 and 7, there is a relatively large increase in temperature and wind speed (WS) and a drop in the relative humidity (RH) during the morning time. The temperature increase rate (∆T, • C h −1 ), RH decrease rate (∆RH, % h −1 ), and WS increase rates (∆WS, (km h −1 ) h −1 ) during the morning time are summarized in Table 2, along with their corresponding values in Kalimantan [20] and Sumatra [19]. Most of the ∆T, ∆RH, and ∆WS values are larger than those values in the comparison year.…”

“…Recently, we could find hourly data for several locations in Indonesia on the web. We already analyzed the peatland fires in Sumatra and Central Kalimantan, using those data, and reported their fire weather conditions [19,20].…”