Fire Hotspots, Scant Rain Raise Haze Alarm in Southeast Asia

The number of fire hotspots across Indonesia and Malaysia is at the highest in seven years, raising the risk of severe haze conditions across the region in the coming months.

There were 825 smoldering hotspots in March across key palm-oil growing regions of the two countries, according to the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre. The agency looked at satellite imagery which can detect heightened levels of infrared radiation. A fire detection algorithm then parses the dataset to identify the points associated with a blaze.