- Aug 2016
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www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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forest fires
Technically correct, in that drought due to lack of rainfall is linked to Indonesian forest fires in some El Nino years.[] (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/201608_heat/)
The lead sentence for the paragraph implies a link between climate change and the following events, including Indonesian forest fires, which is not established. To the extent climate change might be affecting the frequency and intensity of El Nino events or rainfall patterns during El Nino events, it might then be playing a role, but that is not claimed in this article. For example, Dai (2012)[] (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n1/abs/nclimate1633.html) documents a decreasing observed precipitation trend in Indonesia, but Trenberth, Dai et al (2014) note that "it is probably not possible to determine reliable decadal and longer-term trends in drought without first accounting for the effects of ENSO and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation." [] (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n1/full/nclimate2067.html). Trenberth, Dai et al (2014) also note that drought due to ENSO effects on precipitation may also be exacerbated by the effects of warming on evapotranspiration, which is an area of ongoing study.
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