agosto, 28 2024

By WWF-Brazil

With the Amazon ravaged by extreme drought, wildfires are out of control in the region, producing a cloud of smoke over vast areas of the biome, which throughout the month of August spread to other places of the country, thousands of kilometres away, reaching at least 11 states.

After an explosion in the number of fire outbreaks in July, the situation has worsened even further in the Amazon throughout this month. In August alone, up to the 27th, 28,697 fire outbreaks were recorded in the biome. The number represents an increase of 83% compared to the same period in 2023, when 15,710 fire outbreaks were recorded - and is 38% above the average of the previous 10 years (2014 to 2023). The data is from the Queimadas Program, of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

Thus, there are already 53,620 fire outbreaks in 2024. An increase of 80% compared to the same period in 2023, when 29,826 fire outbreaks were recorded. The number of fires between January 1 and August 27, 2024 is the highest for this period since 2010.

In the month of August, more than 80% of the fires in the Amazon were concentrated in the states of Pará (36%), Amazonas (29%) and Mato Grosso (16%).

According to experts, with the explosion of fires in recent weeks, the so-called “flying rivers”, which carry humidity from the Amazon rainforest to other regions of the continent, have transformed into an immense corridor of smoke that can even be seen from space.

The "flying rivers" are part of a climate system that operates in South America and consist of impressive atmospheric water transport corridors formed by air masses loaded with water vapour over the Amazon, which are driven by winds east of the Andes Mountains, travelling for more than three thousand kilometres over other areas of the continent, where they produce rain.

With the wildfires out of control in the Amazon, however, in addition to water vapour, the “flying rivers” transport suspended particles in the atmosphere, producing huge flows of smoke.

Satellites from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) revealed that on August 22, smoke from fires in the Amazon - added to that from fires in the Pantanal and Bolivia - had already reached 11 states: in addition to Amazonas, Rondônia, Pará and Acre, in the Amazon region, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, western Paraná, and parts of Minas Gerais and São Paulo were also affected.

According to Helga Correa, a conservation specialist at WWF-Brazil, an analysis of satellite data shows that between August 8 and 18, there were clouds of smoke concentrated over vast areas of the Amazon, covering the centre-south of the state of Amazonas (especially in the municipalities of Lábrea, Humaitá, Apuí, Carauari, reaching as far as Manaus), the north of the state of Rondônia (between Porto Velho and Ariquemes), and the southwest of Pará (notably in Três Pinheiros, Castelos dos Sonhos and São Félix do Xingu).

“The data was taken from the aerosol sensor on the Sentinel satellite. Measuring aerosols in the atmosphere indicates the presence of smoke or dust in the atmosphere and is traditionally used to track the evolution of events such as fires and volcanic eruptions,” explains Helga.

According to her, the extreme drought that has been affecting the biome since 2023 is a combination of an intense El Niño with climate change and human actions, especially the accumulated deforestation in the region, where more than 18% of the forest cover has already been lost, reducing the Amazon's capacity to produce rain and humidity.

“The region where the smoke we detected in August is concentrated coincides with the so-called Arc of Deforestation - which includes northern Rondônia, southern Amazonas and southwestern Pará. This indicates that in addition to climate change and El Niño, changes in land use caused by humans play a central role in the increase in fires,” she explains.

When the satellite images are analysed in more detail, according to Helga, it is possible to see that the greatest smoke emission matches with areas where there are roads such as BRs 163, 230 and 319.

“The areas in the Amazon biome where a huge increase in temperature was observed in August correspond to these places where there are roads, as if it were a scar that refers to our development model. Where there are roads, there are also cities and, therefore, in addition to the impacts of fire on the environment, the smoke produced by the fires also has a major impact on human health”, says Helga.

On August 22, the Federal government announced that it is concentrating its fire-fighting actions in the Amazon in 21 municipalities responsible for more than half of the fire outbreaks. The government has set up a drought monitoring situation room in an effort to combat the misuse of fire and mitigate the effects of extreme drought.
To date, the federal government has released more than BRL 11 million (about US$ 2 million) for civil defence actions in the Amazon, in addition to recognising the emergency situation in dozens of municipalities affected by the drought.
 

Pantanal and Cerrado

In the Pantanal, 3,845 fire outbreaks were recorded between August 1 and 27, 2024, according to data from the Queimadas Program, by INPE. The figure represents an increase of 3,707% compared to the 101 fire outbreaks recorded in the same period in 2023. The value is 200% higher than the average recorded in the previous 10 years (2014 to 2023), which is 1,283 fire outbreaks. In the year to date, between January 1 and August 27, the biome has already had 8,601 recorded fire outbreaks - an increase of more than 2,100% compared to the 388 fire outbreaks recorded in the same period in 2023. The value is the second highest in the historical series that began in 1998, right behind the 8,783 fire outbreaks recorded in the same period in 2020, a year in which uncontrolled wildfires reached more than 30% of the biome's area.

According to a weekly bulletin published by the Federal Government, all fires detected in the Pantanal between May and July were caused by human action. Of the 7,618 fire outbreaks recorded between January 1 and August 18, more than 52% occurred in the municipality of Corumbá, in Mato Grosso do Sul.

During the same period, the area burned in the Pantanal ranged from 1.3 million hectares to 1.8 million hectares, which corresponds to 8.5% to 12.2% of the biome's extension. Of this total, 78.1% of the fires occurred in private areas, 14.5% in Indigenous Lands and 7.4% in other protected areas.

“The most worrying aspect of fires is that their impacts have short- and long-term effects, fueling the climate emergency cycle. Vegetation acts as a major buffer for the Earth’s temperature, converting part of the solar radiation into fixed carbon that we can see as tree trunks and leaves, for example,” explains Helga. 

“Fires instantly release this stored energy in the form of heat. At the same time, particles in the atmosphere help to retain this heat, which is reflected in the suffocating sensation felt in several cities in Brazil at the moment. Finally, after the smoke dissipates, the burned areas lose the ability to capture part of the solar radiation through photosynthesis, raising the temperature and, in the medium and long term, jeopardising the ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere, which could be carried out at no additional cost by physiologically healthy vegetation,” adds the expert.

In the Cerrado, between August 1 and 27, 15,190 fire outbreaks were recorded. The figure represents an increase of 127% compared to the same period in 2023, when 6,687 fire outbreaks were recorded, according to Inpe.

The fires in the Cerrado in the first 27 days of August 2024 were concentrated in the states of Mato Grosso (31%), Tocantins (13%), Maranhão (12%), São Paulo (12%) and Mato Grosso do Sul (10%).

So far this year, the Cerrado has had 35,882 recorded fire outbreaks. Between January 1 and August 27, the biome only had higher numbers of fires in 2012, 2010 and 2007.

"The situation in the Cerrado is worrying. Data from MapBiomas indicate that since 1985, the biome has lost 380,000 km2, an area larger than Germany. In addition to government actions, a greater commitment from the productive sector is urgently needed, since much of the deforestation and wildfires comes from private areas," warns Daniel Silva, a conservation specialist at WWF-Brazil. For him, conservation actions and other forest preservation initiatives need a systemic approach, since the biomes are connected. "There is no point in protecting the Amazon and destroying the Cerrado; the benefits of the forests do not work in a fragmented manner," says the expert.