Desperate to clear toxic haze, Indonesia to douse its skies with dry ice
Authorities in South East Asia have turned to weather modification as fires blanket the region in smog.
**Desperate to clear toxic haze, Indonesia to douse its skies with dry ice**
Indonesia is facing its worst wildfire season in a decade.
As poisonous smog keeps pouring from wildfires in Indonesia’s forests and peatlands, officials are exploring an experimental method to disperse the haze.
On Thursday, a trial will involve an aircraft dropping pellets of dry ice — solid carbon dioxide — into the air over South Sumatra province, one of the areas hardest hit by the haze.
Indonesia is dealing with its most severe wildfire season in 10 years, with an unusually powerful El Niño worsening drought conditions and making the fires more difficult to extinguish.
As efforts to clear the dangerous air intensify, authorities in Indonesia and neighbouring Malaysia have turned to several weather modification techniques.
These include cloud seeding, which accelerates the natural process of water vapour condensing in clouds by dispersing substances such as silver iodide to create ice crystals.
Such operations have been underway for weeks.
Thursday’s dry ice trial, however, is different.
Instead of working with clouds to produce rain, the dry ice is intended to “break down” haze in the lower atmosphere “so that it can rise upward”, said Dudung Abdurachman, the coordinating minister for political and security affairs.
“If this trial is successful, we will continue with other areas that are central to the haze, such as Central Kalimantan and its surroundings.”
According to authorities, the trial will use 1.5 tons of dry ice.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has urged agencies to intensify efforts to put out the wildfires and reduce the effects of toxic smog spreading from the hotspots.
Additional cloud seeding operations are also scheduled for Central Kalimantan — another haze-affected area — on Thursday and Friday.
Meanwhile, firefighters on the ground continue to battle uncontrolled blazes, and authorities have sent dozens of helicopters to help extinguish the wildfires, although these efforts have sometimes been hampered by poor visibility in the haze.
People across Kalimantan and South Sumatra are suffering most from the toxic smog, with the air in many cities turning a dusty amber.
Pollutants have also crossed into neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia, heightening public health concerns as air quality readings climb to unhealthy levels.
In parts of Malaysia where the haze is especially severe — including the capital Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru, near Singapore — local authorities have carried out their own cloud seeding operations.
Last month, Indonesia allowed Malaysian agencies to enter its airspace for cloud seeding along the two countries’ shared border.
More than one million wildfire hotspots have been recorded in Indonesia this year, burning nearly 900,000 hectares of land, according to the independent forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas.
Much of the public anger is aimed at agricultural companies that burn vegetation as a low-cost way to clear large areas of land.
Indonesian police have identified more than 200 individuals and nine companies as suspects in connection with the fires.