Smoke from New Guinea's fires is now thick enough to be seen from orbit, and it has grounded flights and kept children out of school. The fires are also putting out carbon at a record pace for this point in the year.
A NASA image from the NOAA-20 satellite, taken on October 11, 2026, shows smoke streaming off the island's southern half. Over September and October, haze lingered for weeks, and officials in some areas told children and older people to wear masks. NASA's Robert Field, who works with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University, said much of the smoke hangs near the ground and fouls the air people breathe. "It's a horrible situation," he said.
Emissions already past 2015
The Global Fire Emissions Database puts Papua New Guinea's fire emissions near 32 megatons of carbon as of October 19, higher than any earlier year on that date. Guido van der Werf of Wageningen University & Research, who led the database's development, says the total already tops all of 2015. He calls it very likely that this year will end up the worst on record, ahead of 1997. Indonesian Papua is also running hot: emissions there passed 35 megatons, third behind 2015 and 1997, both El Niño years.
A dry land and plenty of matches
El Niño has shifted the rain away. The Trans-Fly region in the far south went more than 90 days without any, and some areas have had only 5 to 10 percent of normal rainfall since August, according to the country's National Weather Service.
People light most of these fires, researchers say, to clear land, graze animals, farm and hunt, and in dry weather those fires get loose. Yang Chen of the University of California, Irvine, calls Indonesian Papua "Indonesia's new deforestation frontier". Global Forest Watch data show it lost 27,000 hectares of primary forest in 2025, the most since 2017.
Next up: how soon the rains return will decide how long the fires keep burning, and the database's year-end total will show whether this season passes 1997.
Sources
- 1.Fires Char New Guinea - NASA Science · NASA Science
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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