Distribution pattern of historical and future conditions of biomass burning events over Malaysia - Indonesia

Abstract

Biomass burning haze in Malaysia - Indonesia has become a recurring annual issue. Fire hotspot monitoring and projection are the efforts to control the forest and land fire disasters that cause the biomass burning haze. The study assesses the historical distribution and projected future condition of biomass burning (BB) activities in Malaysia - Indonesia. The study performed Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) and Rotated-EOF (REOF) to investigate the historical distribution of biomass burning and Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) as aerosol emission proxy from 2001 to 2020 years. Climate indices are also included to analyze their impacts on BB and AOD distribution. The future condition of BB events (2041 – 2070 years) is projected by applying the Fire Weather Index (FWI), a hotspot danger rating system based on the future climate projection data from CORDEX-SEA. The future climate projection is performed under two scenarios, business-as-usual (RCP4.5) and worst-case scenario (RCP8.5). The results suggest that the primary regime of BB over Malaysia - Indonesia, represented by the distribution of BB and AOD, comes from the burning activities that primarily occurred in the Kalimantan and Sumatra. The research work also shows that the presence of weather anomalies, namely El Niño South Oscillation (ENSO) and positive Dipole Mode (DM), affect the distribution of the BB events and AOD. Additionally, the projection of fire hotspots shows an overall increase in future fire activities under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. However, the average percentage increase of FWI in the future (2041 – 2070) under the RCP8.5 scenario is 43.9%, higher than under the RCP4.5 scenario, which is 39.7%. In short, this study explains how the fire events varied over the past two decades Malaysia – Indonesia and the future fire danger rating for mitigating action consideration. Lastly, the study is expected to be one effort to prevent and reduce the impact of BBH haze in Malaysia – Indonesia.