Satellite data analyzed by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) recorded 346,112 wildfire hotspots this year across all 13 South American countries, surpassing the previous record of 345,322 in 2007.
Massive fires continued to burn along roads in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon this week. The rising smoke joined a wildfire smoke plume that stretched diagonally across the continent from Colombia in the northwest to Uruguay in the southeast, darkening the skies over cities like Sao Paulo.
Brazil and Bolivia have deployed thousands of firefighters to try to control the fires, but much remains at the mercy of the weather. Scientists say while most of the fires are human-caused, recent hot and dry conditions caused by climate change are causing them to spread more quickly.
Smoke rises from a forest fire in the Amazon, Brazil, September 4. Photo: Reuters
South America has been hit by a series of heat waves since last year. “We never had winter,” Karla Longo, an air quality researcher at Inpe, said of the weather in Sao Paulo in recent months. Although it is still winter in the Southern Hemisphere, temperatures in Sao Paulo have been above 32 degrees Celsius since September 7.
The Amazon fires also produce extremely dense smoke due to the density of the burned vegetation, Longo said. About 9 million square kilometers of South America, an area equivalent to half the continent, are sometimes covered in smoke. The Bolivian capital La Paz is similarly shrouded in smoke.
According to Inpe data, the highest number of fires this month were in Brazil and Bolivia, followed by Peru, Argentina and Paraguay. Unusually intense fires in Venezuela, Guyana and Colombia earlier in the year contributed to the record but have largely subsided.
In Brazil, the drought 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 areas and most widespread in recent history, at least according to data since 1950," said drought researcher Ana Paula Cunha at Cemaden.
Hundreds of people marched in the highlands of La Paz, Bolivia's capital, to demand action to put out the fires. "Please realize what is happening in this country, we have lost millions of hectares," said Fernanda Negron, an animal rights activist at the protest. "Millions of animals have burned to death."
Sao Paulo, the most populous city in the Western Hemisphere, had the worst air quality globally earlier this week, higher than famous pollution hotspots like China and India, according to the website IQAir.com.
Exposure to smoke increases the number of people hospitalized for respiratory problems and can cause thousands of premature deaths. According to a 2023 study, wildfire smoke inhalation contributes to an average of 12,000 premature deaths per year in South America.
Ngoc Anh (according to Reuters)
Source: https://www.congluan.vn/nam-my-vuot-qua-ky-luc-ve-chay-rung-post312170.html
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