Indonesia Ties All-Time Heat Record
By: Jeff Masters and Bob Henson , 3:33 PM GMT on October 27, 2015
Indonesia ties all-time national heat record
Along with life-threatening amounts of smoke from agricultural burning during a very strong El Niño, Indonesians are dealing with extreme heat. On Tuesday, the airport station at Semarang, Indonesia, soared to a high of 39.5°C (103.1°F). This ties the national record for the hottest temperature ever observed in Indonesia, set in Cirebon Jatiwangi in 2006. These data come from international weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera, one of the world's top climatologists, who maintains a comprehensive list of extreme temperature records for every nation in the world on his website. As documented in our October 21, 2015 post, there were fourteen nations or territories that had set or tied all-time heat records this year as of October 21. Indonesia brings that tally to sixteen, since Meteo France announced a new all-time high temperature record for French Guiana was set on October 22, 2015, when the mercury hit 37.8°C (100°F) at Saint Laurent du Moroni.
As El Niño-related drought intensifies its chokehold on the region, Indonesia’s pall of smoke and haze is only getting worse, and the effects are accumulating. Six Indonesian provinces have declared states of emergency, and since July more than 500,000 acute respiratory infections have been reported. Despite the health catastrophe, there is no national ban on agricultural fires. A spokesperson for Indonesia’s meteorological agency, Sutopo Puro Nugroho, said: “This is a crime against humanity of extraordinary proportions…But now is not the time to point fingers but to focus on how we can deal with this quickly.” As we noted earlier this month, the fires are Earth’s most expensive weather-related disaster of 2015. The Indonesian government now estimates that the total costs to the government are at least $30 billion (US dollars).
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