Haze Review

Review of Regional Haze Situation for August 2020

1.1 In August 2020, Southwest Monsoon conditions prevailed over the ASEAN region and the prevailing winds blew from the southeast or southwest. The location of the monsoon rain band north of the Equator, combined with the impact of Tropical Storms Sinlaku/Mekkhala and Typhoon Maysak, contributed to the rainy weather over most of the northern ASEAN region (Figure 1). In the southern ASEAN region, the weather was mostly dry in the first half of the month followed by an increase in shower activities over the equatorial region in the latter half of the month.

Figure 1: Average Daily Rainfall and Mean Wind for August 2020. (Source: JAXA GsMaP)

1.2 The hotspot counts were observed to be relatively low when compared to the same review period in previous years for most parts of the ASEAN region due to the wetter weather (Figure 2 and Figure 3).

Figure 2: Hotspot counts for the southern ASEAN region for August 2016 – 2020. [Note: The hotspot count from 2019 is based on the NOAA-20 satellite, and based on the Suomi-NPP satellite for the period from 2016-2018.]

 

1.3 In August 2020, isolated hotspots were detected mostly in Kalimantan and Sumatra, as well as in some parts of Java, Nusa Tenggara and Viet Nam (Figure 4). While most of the hotspots detected in the ASEAN region were short-lived, a cluster of hotspots with high fire intensity (Figure 5) was observed to persist for more than a week (Figure 4) in West Kalimantan. Isolated smoke plumes were observed to emanate from some of these hotspots and affected the western parts of Sarawak on 8 August 2020.

Figure 5: Maximum fire intensity based on NOAA-20 satellite surveillance in Jul 2020.