Planes over Palembang released solid carbon-dioxide pellets into the lower sky on 15 October as Jakarta tried an unusual fix for choking wildfire smoke. Officials put the load at roughly one and a half tonnes. Coordinating Minister Dudung Abdurachman framed the goal as thinning haze stuck near the ground so people can see farther and breathe cleaner air — not as a rain-making run.
Silver-iodide cloud seeding has already been flying for weeks. Dry ice works differently: meteorologists say a sudden chill can shake temperature inversions that keep cooler, dirty air trapped under warmer layers. The idea traces to 1940s weather labs; Indonesian researchers themselves stress that nobody has proven it clears tropical peat-fire smog.
A successful Palembang trial, ministries say, would open the door to Central Kalimantan and other smoke hubs. President Prabowo Subianto has ordered faster firefighting while a strong El Niño deepens drought. Tracking groups tally well over a million fire points and close to nine hundred thousand hectares burned this year.
Drift has carried the brown air into Singapore and Malaysia. Unhealthy readings there prompted classroom shutdowns in several Malaysian states and in Timor-Leste, plus extra Malaysian seeding flights. Helicopters and ground crews still fight hotspots that thick smoke often grounds.
Sumatra and Kalimantan residents keep waking under amber skies. Whether one aerial drop clears city streets will show in the next evaluation — and only if the fires themselves finally fade. Environmental groups keep stressing that lasting relief requires putting out peat fires and changing land-clearing practices, not only spraying the sky.
