Floating houses are seen stranded in Aleixo Lake due to the severe drought in the west of Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil, on September 20, 2024. (Photo by MICHAEL DANTAS / AFP)
Much of Brazil is burning as tens of thousands of fires rage around the country, half of them in the Amazon rainforest. Exacerbated by a severe drought, the fires threaten one of the world’s most crucial ecosystems and are consuming the Amazon’s vast stores of carbon, sending more of the damaging greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
2.4 million hectares (about 6 million acres) of forests, fields and pastures in the Amazon burned between June and August. There were more than 95,000 hot spots in the Amazon biome this year to Sept. 18, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, known as Inpe.
The fires emitted 31.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent between June and August, says the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, or Ipam. That represents an annual increase of 60% and is roughly on par with the emissions from running eight coal-fired power plants for a year.
The Amazon is one of the world’s most important carbon sinks, said Lucas Ferrante, a biologist and researcher at both Sao Paulo University and the Federal University of Amazonas. "Now, it is emitting carbon,” he said. "We are at a turning point.”
Although fires are common during the country’s dry season, this year’s anomalies are a red flag for experts.
"The timing of the fires and how long it is lasting is what is worrying us,” said Ritaumaria Pereira, executive director at Imazon, a nonprofit focused on research and projects in the Amazon region. "Things have gotten out of control, and the name for that is climate change.”
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When rainforests burn
Climatologists have warned for decades that events like this year’s would come to pass. Droughts in the last two decades have become much more severe and much more common. The last year - the hottest on record globally - brought Brazil’s extremes to a new level.
"This was always something that we know would happen,” said Michael Coe, senior scientist and tropics program director at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. "But there’s a huge difference between knowing that it will happen and seeing it happen.”
When rainforests burn, what replaces them can’t replace the carbon storage and evaporative cooling that benefits the global climate. The Amazon is a critical part of the global climate system. Without it, modeling suggests that the Earth could warm another degree Celsius on top of the already dangerous 2.7C or so that’s already in store. Fossil-fuel burning, deforestation and other causes have lifted the global average temperature by about 1.3C since before industrialization.
Around 40% of the fire spots in Brazil are in areas of primary, or undisturbed, vegetation. The rest are mostly in deforested areas. Deforestation is lower than it has been in years past, an indication of how primed the land is to burn due to hot, dry conditions.
Climate change worsens fire conditions, said Rodrigo Agostinho, president of Ibama, Brazil’s environmental monitoring agency. "Although it is not the climate that starts the fires,” he added.
Ibama says almost all of the fires have been caused by humans, whether deliberately or accidentally. Burning is common in Brazilian agriculture. Historically, Brazil encouraged it as a fast, cheap way to clear land and prepare soil for new planting. The government has banned the practice, although many farmers don’t obey the rule.
Agostinho said Ibama has gone on a war footing, with thousands of vehicles and hundreds of inspectors, to control the fires. The agency has asked for assistance from neighboring countries, even some that are also dealing with wildfires themselves.
Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva told senators earlier this month that the rainforest is "losing humidity” and becoming more vulnerable to fires in a "severe process of climate change.”
On Tuesday, she said during a radio interview that "at the moment, any fire is characterized as criminal.” The government wants to stiffen existing penalties for setting fires.
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Clouded skies
Smoke from the fires has already covered a large part of the country and has clouded the sky over far-away São Paulo. The smoke even reached Argentina and Uruguay, according to Climatempo, a climate monitoring service. (Brazil’s smoke is compounded by that from fires in other countries, including Bolivia and Paraguay.)
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this week announced 514 million reais (about $95 million) to fund emergency measures, including more investigations and hiring specialized firefighters.
Last year, at the start of his third term in office, Lula returned to the international stage promising to bolster protections for the Amazon, shield tribal lands from resource extraction and spark a green transition of Brazil’s economy. Deforestation went down and a project establishing guidelines for developing sustainable fuels was approved, marking progress toward a cleaner-energy future.
However, the crisis in the Amazon - captured in photos seen around the world - may pose a challenge for Lula when he heads to the United Nations General Assembly in New York later this week.
The region needs better fire prevention, more investment in firefighting and stepped-up enforcement, said Manoela Machado, a post-doctoral researcher at Woodwell who studies drivers of fire risk in the Amazon.
"Lula is trying to convince the world that Brazil is a climate leader. But there’s some disconnect there in the actual actions on the ground,” Machado said.
