Fires are ravaging South America, from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest to thethe dry forests of Bolivia, passing through the largest wetlands in the world, and have broken the record for fires recorded in a year until September 11.
Satellite data analysed by Brazil’s space research agency Inpe has recorded 346,112 fire outbreaks so far this year in South America, surpassing the 2007 record of 345,322 in a data set dating back to 1998.
This week, a photographer from Reuters Travelling through the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, he witnessed huge fires burning vegetation along the roads.
Smoke from the Brazilian fires has darkened skies over cities like Sao Paulo, fueling a wildfire smoke corridor seen from space that stretches diagonally across the continent from Colombia to Uruguay.
Brazil and Bolivia have sent thousands of firefighters to try to control the flames, but most remain at the mercy of the extreme weather conditions that are fuelling the blazes.
Scientists say that while most fires are man-made, recent hot and dry conditions caused by climate change are helping fires spread more quickly. South America has been hit by a series of heatwaves since last year.
“We’ve never had winter,” said Karla Longo, an air quality researcher at Inpe, about the weather in Sao Paulo in recent months. “It’s absurd.”
Despite it still being winter in the southern hemisphere, high temperatures in Sao Paulo have remained above 32 degrees Celsius since Saturday.
Hundreds of people demonstrated in La Paz to demand measures against the fires, carrying banners and signs that read “Bolivia in flames” and “For cleaner air, stop burning.”
“Please realize what is happening in the country, we have lost millions of hectares,” said Fernanda Negrón, an animal rights activist, at the protest. “Millions of animals have been burned to death.”
In Brazil, a drought The earthquake that began last year has become the worst on record, according to the national disaster monitoring agency Cemaden.
“Overall, the 2023-2024 drought is the most intense, longest in some regions and most extensive in recent history, at least in data since 1950,” said Ana Paula Cunha, a researcher at Cemaden.
The highest number of fires this month were recorded in Brazil and Bolivia, followed by Peru, Argentina and Paraguay, according to Inpe data. Unusually intense fires that hit Venezuela, Guyana and Colombia earlier this year contributed to the record, but have now largely subsided.
Fires caused by deforestation in the Amazon generate particularly intense smoke due to the density of the vegetation burning, Longo explained.
Some 9 million square kilometres of South America have been covered in smoke at times, more than half the continent, he said.
According to the website IQAir.com, Sao Paulo had the worst air quality in the world earlier this week, higher than that of famous pollution hotspots such as China and India. La Paz was also covered in smoke.
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