Strongest in 1000 years? Super El Niño Heats Up Indonesia.
by By: Gert Antonio Tobing - Indonesian Science Affairs Fellow 2026
The strength of El Niño intensifies in the past four decades compared with the previous 1,000 years, study says. Combined with the projection of this year’s cycle, which is predicted to potentially peak at around 3.6 degree Celcius, the finding suggests that the planet is experiencing the strongest El Niño in a millennium.
Indonesia, which lies in the western Pacific, is already bearing the impacts of this phenomenon. Blazing forest fires, water scarcity, and prolonged droughts are expected to get worse in the coming months.
Warmer Climate. Stronger El Niño.
Julia Cole, a palaeoclimatologist at the University of Michigan, says that stronger power of El Niño cycles in the past decades is closely linked with climate change.
This conclusion comes from the historical reconstruction of seawater temperature in Galapagos islands, one of the locations greatly affected by El Niño. By looking into 13 coral cores---which means analysing its oxygen isotope as well as its ratio of strontium and calcium—, Cole’s team mined the data of the region’s sea temperature history up to 1,000 years back.
Until 1850s, she says, the temperature was relatively stable. The following years shows a fluctuation but in the last 40-50 years, the temperature consistently increases. Cole’s simulations weed out natural factors such as volcanic eruptions or solar activities as the reasons behind the trend, strengthening the idea of capitalism-induced greenhouse gases as the main culprit.
“I think all of those things are converging on a story that says that global warming is driving stronger El Niño’s”, Cole tells Indonesian Science Affairs.
Yet not everyone is convinced. While Cole’s data suggest strongly that climate change is intensifying El Niño, the United Nations (UN) reported that “scientists have not established that man-made climate change is increasing or intensifying El Niño”. Cole admits that her data covers just the last millennium in fragmented windows of coral records rather than continuous recording and that better geographical coverage is needed. “Nothing is ever the last word in science”
The debate is ongoing but the fact that this year’s El Niño sparks global concerns over its environmental and socio-economic consequences is indisputable.
Fire squads (many are volunteers) are struggling to extinguish the smoldering fires in Riau. Image by: Melvinas Priananda/SISJ.
El Niño situation in Indonesia
In Indonesia, the Super El Nino manifests in many ways. The Agency of Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics (BMKG) reported that southern provinces are experiencing prolonged drought with more than sixty days without rain. The scorching sun has also dried up the Kapuas River, exposing the bottom of the major waterway that once connect the economy of the islands.
Severe forest and land fires are also ravaging Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Southern Papua. The mismanagement of peatland and intentional burning are the main problems, says David Gaveau, a landscape ecologists who founded Nusantara Atlas, an online platform that tracks landscape change in Indonesia. But intense heat and dry climate induced by El Niño could ignited the fire and flame up existing fires to wider areas.
According to the Atlas, fires have burned 895,657 hectares of land across Indonesia from January to August 2026. Millions of people in six affected provinces are exposed to harmful gases such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. West Kalimantan is the hardest hit province, with people reported that their world has turned into “hell”.
In the affected provinces, the level of PM 2.5 toxic particulate could reach “dangerous level”. Per August 2026, The Ministry of Health reported that at least 165,000 people contracted respiratory infections. One infectious study also projected that this year El Nino might be followed by the peak of dengue seasons in the country, prompting for immediate public health measures.
West Kalimantan is the most severely hit. Image by: Nusantara Atlas.
The situation could get worse, says Erma Yulihastin, research professor from the Research Center for Climate and Atmosphere, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Indonesia. Current El Niño shows a significant increase in temperature of around 0.1 °C each week from its inception in February 2026 until now in September 2026. “Now the increase is at 2.54 °C and it’s predicted the maximum will reach up to 3.5 degrees increase”. (BMKG has reported 2.76 °C in September 2026).
It’s time to slow down.
Cole says this worrying phenomenon is an urgent reminder for humanity to mitigate the climate change seriously.
“If stronger El Niño’s being caused by [global] warming,” she says, then slowing down the warming of the planet could ease the El Nino’s intensification. “We have a lot of work to do for that, but we can at least stop it from getting worse.”
This year, after Senyar tropical cyclones in eastern Indian Ocean and the Nepal avalanche in the Himalayan, the Super El Nino is the third climate-related disaster affecting vulnerable communities in the Global South.