The effect of El Nino is delaying the heavy rain in the Western Pacific which would normally douse Indonesian wildfires and clear the smog plaguing Southeast Asia, U.N. climate experts said Monday.
It is a case of ``fires not being able to be controlled by man which under normal circumstances would be controlled by nature,'' said Mike Coughlan, senior director at the World Meteorological Organization.
The El Nino effect, resulting from shifts in the water temperatures of the Pacific Ocean, causes far-reaching changes around the world and reverses normal climate patterns. Some areas are hit by floods, others by droughts.
Coughlan and other experts at the WMO said despite rain over the weekend, the overall shortage of precipitation in Indonesia was expected to continue.
In a normal year, monsoon rains would would help put out the fires and wash the smog out of the air, Coughlan said.
But, he added, ``with the absence of rain under the El Nino effect, we don't see that rain coming to put the fires out.''