With the onset of the hotter El Niño weather phenomenon, Singapore is on high alert as the annual dry season brings with it additional risks of land and forest fires developing in neighboring Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as the potential surge of haze and air pollution that comes with it.

According to the 2023 Haze Outlook report released by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), the region has received a red alert rating the likelihood that trans-boundary haze might occur this year.

It was the first time the region has been given the highest rating since the report was launched in 2019 following the massive land and forest fires that raged across 1.6 million hectares of land in Indonesia and caused a four-month transnational air pollution crisis.

“After three relatively haze-free blue-sky years, this year there is a real risk that fire and haze will return,” SIIA chairman Simon Tay told the press in an online briefing from Singapore on Wednesday.

Aaron Choo, a coauthor of the report, said the main factor for this year’s rating was the weather, as multiple meteorological forecasts pointed to an incoming dry spell.

Two regional weather phenomena stand out in particular, he said, pointing to El Niño and warmer sea temperatures in the Indian Ocean, which were also present in 1997, 2015 and 2019, years where trans-boundary haze in Southeast Asia was particularly bad.

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