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View all search resultsRainless days exacerbate air pollution in Jakarta
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Skyscrapers in Jakarta are shrouded in haze on July 20 in East Jakarta. Jakarta's Air Quality Index (AQI) averaged between 120 and 168 in mid-July 2026, placing the city's air quality in the unhealthy category. (JP/Iqro Rinaldi)
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rolonged rainless days have worsened Jakarta’s air quality, with residents reporting respiratory discomfort and environmentalists warning that weather modification may not be enough to address the capital’s broader environmental problems that can exacerbate the conditions brought on by El Niño.
“I feel that my health has been affected [by Jakarta’s poor air quality]. About two weeks ago, I had a cold that wouldn’t go away, and even now, my nose gets congested easily,” Billa, a 28-year-old East Jakarta resident, said on Monday.
"The Jakarta sky has looked murky even to the naked eye, perhaps because it has not rained for weeks," she added.
Billa’s concerns echo the Indonesian Forum for the Environment’s (Walhi) assessment that Jakarta’s “environmental imbalance” has become a chronic problem, with green open spaces accounting for only 5 percent of the city’s total area and 90 percent of the land surface has been covered in concrete.
“That causes extreme heat during the dry season because sunlight reaching the ground is not sufficiently filtered by trees,” Walhi Jakarta campaign coordinator Muhammad Aminullah said on Monday.
Jakarta’s air quality on Monday was classified as “unhealthy for sensitive groups”, according to Swiss air-quality monitoring company IQAir, with PM2.5 pollutant concentrations reaching 49.1 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3). The level of the PM2.5 microscopic particulate pollution was nearly nine times higher than the safety limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The IQAir platform has recorded a deterioration in Jakarta’s air quality since May, coinciding with the El Niño phenomenon, which is expected to persist until September. The periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific often brings drier and prolonged dry seasons to Indonesia, including Jakarta.
