Haze: the API Reading

Alor Setar's own Air Pollutant Index from the Department of Environment, updated hourly, with the API 200 school-closure rule and who in Kedah actually decides it — and why the smoke is usually Sumatra's, not the district's own.

[data-tool-body-wait]{display:none}This part of the page needs JavaScript, and this browser isn’t running it. Everything else on the page still reads.

This still hasn’t loaded. It looks stuck rather than slow, so reloading is worth a try now.

Reload the page Other tools for Alor Setar

About these tools

Town Tools builds free, public tools for Alor Setar and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.

Schools, and the API 200 rule

The reading is below 200, which is the level at which the National Haze Action Plan closes schools, kindergartens and childcare centres.

A closure is decided and announced by the education authorities, not by this index and not by this page. This page shows the reading and names who decides. Check the announcement channels below, and your own school.

Who decides

The National Haze Action Plan sets the level, but the plan itself routes the decision through the disaster management committee, and the closure order comes from the education authorities. These are the bodies involved:

Jabatan Pendidikan Negeri Kedah (Kedah State Education Department) — the department that orders schools, kindergartens and childcare centres across Kedah to close, and through which the order reaches them
Pejabat Pendidikan Daerah Kota Setar — the district education office covering Alor Setar city — it holds the list of schools here, and it is who your own school answers to
Jawatankuasa Pengurusan Bencana Negeri (JPBN) Kedah — the state disaster management committee the National Haze Action Plan routes the decision through, so that a closure is a decision taken by people rather than a consequence the index triggers by itself
Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia (Ministry of Education) — issues the national instruction that the state and district offices act under, and announces closures that cross state lines

Where a closure is announced

Ministry of Education Malaysia — national announcements affecting schools, and the instruction the state department acts under
NADMA — Portal Bencana — the national disaster agency's portal, where state disaster committee actions are published
Bernama — the national news agency. A Kedah closure is typically carried here and on the radio before it appears on any department's own page — worth checking first on a bad morning
Majlis Bandaraya Alor Setar (MBAS) — the council does not close schools, but it announces local closures — parks, council events, counters — and often posts to Facebook before its website

Which way it is going

Steady — little changed over the last 12 hours, reading 57 now.

The highest reading in the last 24 hours was 59, at 12 Oct, 10:00 am.

The last 24 hours

Hour	API	Band
12 Oct, 7:00 pm	57	Moderate
12 Oct, 6:00 pm	57	Moderate
12 Oct, 5:00 pm	56	Moderate
12 Oct, 4:00 pm	57	Moderate
12 Oct, 3:00 pm	57	Moderate
12 Oct, 2:00 pm	57	Moderate

Where this reading comes from

The Department of Environment publishes this reading as "Alor Setar", and the monitor is genuinely in the city rather than out at an airport or a substation elsewhere. Its published coordinates (6.137°N, 100.347°E) sit at a school compound off Lebuhraya Sultanah Bahiyah in Taman Seri Indah, Kampung Mempelam — about 2.8 km north-west of the old royal core around Masjid Zahir and Balai Besar. It is the only DOE monitor for the whole of Kota Setar and Pokok Sena, so a reading here stands in for the flat, built-up plain rather than any one neighbourhood.

Around the state

Haze arrives across a whole region rather than at one town, so the stations nearby are worth a look — they are often where tomorrow’s reading here is today.

The highest reading in the state right now is Sungai Petani, at API 58.

Station	API	Band
Langkawi — 58 km north-west, across the strait on the island — often the first Kedah station to show a shift in wind direction	25	Good
Sungai Petani — 58 km south, Kedah's other large town and usually the state's worse reading during an episode	58	Moderate
Kulim Hi-Tech — 86 km south, near the Penang border	53	Moderate

Where the fires are

The ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre counts fire hotspots from satellite passes across the region each day. These are the counts from the most recent pass:

Region	Hotspots
Sumatra	142	NOAA20 pass, 12 October

A hotspot is a heat signature detected in one satellite pass. The count says how many were seen, not who lit them, not whether any particular fire is what you can smell, and nothing about where the smoke will go next. Cloud cover hides hotspots, so a low count is not proof of a quiet day.

Good to know

This city hit 152 on its own, not just its neighbours

On 24 August 2026 at 10am, Alor Setar's own reading reached API 152 — Unhealthy — alongside Sungai Petani's 155. The Kedah State Health Department's advice that day was to cut down time and strenuous activity outdoors, and named children, older people, and anyone with heart or lung disease as needing extra care. This is not a story that only happens to the state's other towns.

Utusan Malaysia, 24 August 2026

The smoke is Sumatra and Kalimantan's, and it runs on the monsoon's clock

MetMalaysia's director-general put it plainly on 9 September 2026: the transboundary haze reaching the peninsula is smoke from forest and peatland fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, carried in on the Southwest Monsoon, which normally runs May to September. "If the source of the smoke is not tackled or eliminated, the haze will not go away and will persist," he said — and expected some relief only once the monsoon transition arrived at the end of the month.

Media Selangor, 9 September 2026, quoting MetMalaysia

Kalimantan's hotspot count nearly tripled in three days

Satellite hotspot counts for Kalimantan rose from 301 to 461 to 808 between 12 and 14 September 2026, and by midday on the 15th, 38 of the country's 68 API stations were reading Unhealthy. That is the shape of a transboundary episode: the fires are hundreds of kilometres away, and a station here moves because the wind does.

Free Malaysia Today, 15 September 2026

Open burning is the one part of this a resident here can act on

Most of what drives a bad reading in Kedah blew in from across the Strait, but not all of it: the Department of Environment's own count of open-burning complaints in the state has been rising, and its officers say a large share of them trace back to residential areas and the padi fields that ring this city, not to industry. Section 29A of the Environmental Quality Act 1974 bans open burning outright, on any premises, and DOE takes reports on it around the clock.

Official pages

APIMS — the Department of Environment's live air quality portalthe authoritative reading for every station in Malaysia, and the page to open if this one is not loading
Department of Environment Malaysiathe department that computes and publishes the API, and the one to report open burning to
ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centreregional haze maps and the daily satellite hotspot counts shown further down this page
MetMalaysiathe national weather service — wind, and the rain that actually clears an episode