The Indonesian archipelago will continue to have wet rainy season during 2025 as the impact of La Niña continues. The country can expect high intensity rainfall to occur until April and thereby increasing the risk of catastrophic events causing much disaster in the country.
After enduring a prolonged dry season due to El Niño, a large part of Indonesia endured hydrometeorological disasters such as floods and landslides for most of last year, a trend likely to continue in the next few months, the country’s disaster agency has warned.
Throughout 2024, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) recorded a total of 2,107 incidents of disasters that claimed at least 547 lives, displacing over 6.3mn others and destroying around 60,000 homes across the country, said the Post.
The figure was less than half of the 5,400 incidents in 2023. But the decline was due to a new method used by the BNPB to classify an event as a disaster, which should now either result in at least one casualty, impact 50 people or damage five buildings, among other criteria.
More than half of the 2024 disasters, around 1,088 incidents, were floods. Extreme weather events trailed as the second-most common occurrence at 455 incidents.
While El Niño was the main regional factor that drove a high number of forest and land fires in 2023, it was La Niña’s turn last year, which brought wetter and colder winds to the archipelago, said BNPB spokesperson Abdul Muhari.
“This caused rainfall to be higher than average, making floods and other extreme weather events the most frequent disasters last year,” Mr Muhari said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
The report added that the Indonesian archipelago will continue to have wet rainy season during 2025 as the impact of La Niña continues. The country can expect high intensity rainfall to occur until April and thereby increasing the risk of catastrophic events causing much disaster in the country.
Hazards from hydrometeorological disasters were still expected to threaten the country in the coming months, Abdul said. The prediction was in line with a forecast from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) warning that extreme weather events could persist until April.
“The intensity of rainfall will continue to increase until February. The BNPB is focusing on end-to-end integrated anticipatory measures,” the spokesperson said.
Among other efforts, the disaster agency is launching cloud-seeding operations to induce rain before it arrives over heavily populated areas. The BNPB also plans to install new early warning equipment to detect the buildup of volcanic materials to anticipate lahar flows.
The agency also aims to improve disaster preparedness at the grassroots level by disbursing funds, manpower and equipment for regional administrations and encouraging the establishment of community patrols to routinely check for signs of imminent disaster.