Indonesia is experiencing a surge in peat fires early in the 2026 fire season, driven by a strengthening El Niño and severe drought. These fires, which burn underground in dried wetland soils, are particularly dangerous due to their high pollution levels and difficulty to extinguish.
NASA’s Aqua satellite captured images on September 1, 2026, showing numerous fire detections across the region. These fires are concentrated in Indonesia, which holds approximately 36 percent of the world’s tropical peatlands. The fires ignite when these normally wet landscapes dry out during droughts, creating conditions similar to those seen in 1997 and 2015 – historically destructive fire seasons.
Robert Field, a Columbia University researcher who developed the Global Fire Weather Database, noted that fire activity is tracking sharply upward, mirroring the intensity of 2015. “The strong El Niño is making the dry season drier over the fire-prone parts of the country and exacerbating burning — just as we anticipated it would,” Field said. Peat fires release significantly more pollutants than typical tropical forest fires, including three times more fine particulate matter, five times more sulfur dioxide, three times more organic carbon, and twice as much methane and carbon monoxide. The fires smolder at relatively low temperatures, making them hard to extinguish and allowing them to continue underground for months.
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