Fires Char New Guinea

New Guinea experienced an exceptional fire season during September and October 2026. A strong El Niño helped produce unusually dry conditions, allowing fires to spread across savannas, grasslands, forests, and other ecosystems. Smoke covered large parts of the island for weeks and created serious air-quality problems.

The southern part of the island was especially affected. The Trans-Fly region went more than 90 consecutive days without rain, and some areas received only 5 to 10 percent of normal precipitation. People started many fires for crops, grazing, land clearing, deforestation, and hunting. Dry vegetation allowed some managed fires to escape and become wildfires.

The VIIRS instrument on NOAA-20 captured thick smoke streaming from southern New Guinea on October 11. Pollution delayed and canceled flights, closed schools, and led some officials to recommend masks for children and older people. Researchers expected fires to continue until heavy wet-season rains arrived, typically in early November.

El Niño is a recurring climate pattern involving unusual warming in the tropical Pacific Ocean. It changes large-scale atmospheric circulation and shifts rainfall from some regions to others. In New Guinea, that shift produced unusually dry weather during the 2026 fire season. The result was less rain, drier vegetation, and conditions that made fires easier to start and harder to control.

The southernmost part of Papua New Guinea showed the effect clearly. The Trans-Fly region went more than 90 consecutive days without rain. Since August, some areas received only about 5 to 10 percent of normal precipitation. Savannas and grasslands there are relatively fire-prone, so the drought left them especially vulnerable when people lit fires for farming, pasture maintenance, land clearing, or hunting.

El Niño did not itself light every fire. People ignite most fires in this normally wet region. However, drought made managed burns more likely to spread uncontrollably. The fires were expected to persist until heavy wet-season rains returned, typically in early November.

The fires produced exceptionally large carbon emissions across both sides of New Guinea. In Papua New Guinea, fires had released nearly 32 megatons of carbon by October 17, according to the Global Fire Emissions Database. That was more than any other year on record at the same point in the calendar. Researchers said the annual total was very likely to set a new record.

On the Indonesian side, carbon emissions exceeded 35 megatons. That ranked as the third-highest total, behind the severe El Niño fire years of 2015 and 1997. Papua New Guinea’s emissions had already exceeded its entire 2015 total, and researchers expected them to surpass the 1997 record as well.

These figures measure estimated carbon released by vegetation fires, not simply the number of fire detections. GFED combines satellite observations, vegetation information, and other data to estimate burned areas and emissions. Continued burning before the wet season meant the totals could rise further.

In New Guinea, most fires begin with people rather than natural causes, researchers say. Communities burn vegetation for crop production, pasture maintenance, deforestation, land clearing, and hunting. These fires can be deliberate and managed under normal conditions. Fire is therefore part of several everyday land-use activities across the island.

The danger rises sharply during drought. El Niño shifted rainfall patterns and left some southern areas with almost no rain for months. Dry grass, savanna, forest edges, and other vegetation can ignite more easily and burn faster. A fire intended for a crop field or pasture may cross its planned boundary, particularly when conditions are dry and unmanaged areas or primary-forest edges are nearby.

This process helps explain the extreme 2026 fire activity. The Trans-Fly region, with relatively fire-prone savannas and grasslands, went more than 90 days without rain. Researchers expected fires to continue until heavy wet-season rains arrived, usually in early November.

The 2026 fires affected daily life across New Guinea, not just forests and grasslands. Thick smoke remained over large areas for weeks, and much of it stayed near the ground. That produced severe air-quality problems. Smoke also affected transportation and public services, showing how a distant fire can disrupt communities far from the flames.

Flights were delayed or canceled, and schools were closed in response to the pollution. Officials in some areas urged children and older people to wear masks. Meanwhile, the drought itself caused crop failures and water shortages. Local reports also described school disruptions linked directly to the lack of rain. These impacts combined exposure to smoke with the practical effects of a prolonged dry season.

Some smoke drifted into nearby thunderstorms, where it could be washed out or lifted into the upper troposphere. Much remained near the surface, however. The fires were expected to continue until heavy rains arrived in southern New Guinea, typically in early November, potentially extending the disruption until then.

Indonesian Papua is becoming important for deforestation and plantation development because large areas are being opened for new economic activities. Over the past two decades, land has been cleared for industrial oil palm and pulpwood plantations. Small-scale cultivation, urban expansion, and mining have also contributed to forest loss. These changes are shifting the location of Indonesia’s forest clearing toward Papua.

The region’s recent figures show the acceleration. Global Forest Watch reported that Indonesian Papua lost 27,000 hectares of primary forest in 2025. That was nearly double the 2024 total and the highest loss since 2017. Clearing can remove forest cover and create edges where fires are more likely, especially during drought.

Yang Chen described Papua as Indonesia’s new deforestation frontier. In 2026, Indonesian Papua experienced exceptionally high fire activity alongside eastern Indonesia. Unlike established plantation areas, unmanaged land and primary-forest edges generally lack strong fire protection, making burning and smoke more severe when dry weather arrives.

Satellites provide repeated observations of fires, smoke, and the land beneath them. In this case, the VIIRS instrument aboard NOAA-20 captured thick smoke streaming from southern New Guinea on October 11. Satellite systems can also identify changing vegetation and fire activity across areas that are difficult to survey from the ground.

GFED, the Global Fire Emissions Database, uses those observations in a broader modeling framework. It combines remote sensing with vegetation characteristics and other information to estimate the extent of vegetation fires. The system then estimates how much carbon those fires released. This approach produces comparable totals across regions and years, rather than relying only on individual fire reports.

By October 17, GFED estimated nearly 32 megatons of carbon from fires in Papua New Guinea and more than 35 megatons in Indonesian Papua. The database has tracked fire emissions for nearly three decades. Its near-real-time estimates helped researchers compare 2026 with earlier El Niño fire years, including 1997 and 2015.