Fire alert: Could 2014 be 'the year from hell'?

When it comes to wildfires, 2014 might be a doozy.

Where there's smoke...  forest burning in Sumatra (photo by William Laurance)

ALERT member Tom Struhsaker has passed along a recent news report about the intense smoke now blanketing much of Southeast Asia, thanks in large part to rampant forest burning in Sumatra.  This is doubly frightening given that rainfall in Sumatra has been normal in recent months.

In Sumatra, over 50,000 people have had to be treated for respiratory distress.  And so far more than 200 Malaysian schools have had to be closed because of the acrid smoke.

But things could get a lot worse.  Climate scientists have been agog at recent temperature readings in the Pacific Ocean, which have been 6 degrees Celsius higher than normal. 

Such high temperatures are a harbinger of El Niño events--and such high readings suggest we might be heading for a mega-Niño.  

That's a big worry, because El Niños can cause major droughts and monsoon failure in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as parts of the Amazon. 

Climatologists say we could suffer a severe drought like that in 1997-98, when wildfires razed large expanses of Borneo and Sumatra and the Amazon.  

Forewarned is forearmed.  Governments in the Asia-Pacific region and Amazon need to be ready to impose and enforce burning bans across vulnerable areas. 

Without such bans, 2014 might be the year from hell--both for people and forests.