Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja, Straits Times 17 Jun 09;
JAKARTA - THE haze in Riau caused by forest fires has been subdued by rain over the past few days, a local weather forecaster said.
'Light haze still remains, but that's because of forest fires in the neighbouring provinces in the south. The wind is blowing our way,' weather forecaster Ardhitama, from the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics in Pekanbaru, Riau, told The Straits Times by telephone yesterday.�
Smoke from forest fires in Riau and other parts of Sumatra re-emerged last week, reaching Riau's coastal city of Dumai, about 320km from Singapore.
The dry season in Riau usually peaks between mid-June and end-July.
More than 400 hot spots have been recorded in Riau so far this month, compared with 227 in the whole of June last year, AFP reported yesterday.�
South-east Asia has been hit by haze almost every year since 1997. That year, fires set to clear land in Indonesia and East Malaysia burned out of control, fuelled by the El Nino weather phenomenon. The ensuing smoke blanketed much of the region in a choking haze.
There are concerns that a similar problem could arise this year. The Climate Prediction Centre in the United States said earlier this month that an El Nino pattern, which can produce chaotic conditions that result in droughts and floods, could develop within weeks.
Despite a ban on open burning, some farmers and villagers in Sumatra and Kalimantan are still clearing land by cutting down vegetation and burning it, a much cheaper method than having to rent heavy machinery to clear land.
Deforestation has cut the forest area in Riau to about 30 per cent of its total land now, from 78 per cent back in 1982, according to environmental group Greenpeace South-east Asia.
