Indonesia has already lost 200,000 hectares, and El Nino peaks in November

Governments on three continents are getting ready for an El Nino that forecasters expect to be one of the worst on record, Al Jazeera reports, and the important detail is the timing. El Nino is what happens when the sea near the surface of the central and eastern tropical Pacific turns unusually warm, which shifts where rain falls across much of the planet. For Indonesia it usually means a dry season that runs longer and harder than normal. This one is not expected to peak until around November.

Indonesia is already one of the clearest cases. More than 200,000 hectares have burned since the start of the year, with 95,000 hectares lost in July alone, an area the government puts at roughly three times the size of Jakarta. Thick smog now sits over cities such as Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan. Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni said that if there is "even the slightest trace of a cloud suitable for seeding" his teams will fly, which tells you how narrow the remaining options are.

The rest of the list shows what a strong El Nino does to a country over months rather than weeks. Sri Lanka has set aside $14 million and is trucking water to about 72,000 people across seven districts, delivering 75 litres each every two or three days, with reservoir levels down to around 10 per cent. In Honduras, 80 per cent of the country is under a drought alert. Indonesia is on the same list as countries that are now rationing drinking water, and it reached that point before the event reached full strength.

Why it matters

The useful thing here is the calendar, not the damage report. If the peak is still around November, then the fires, the smoke and the dry wells of the past few weeks are the early part of this, not the end of it. Farmers should plan for a wet season that starts late, and households should expect bad air to return rather than clear. Anyone who budgets carefully for food should watch rice and vegetable prices from now through to the end of the year, because a long dry spell reaches your kitchen a harvest later, not the same week.