South America breaks record fires

South America is being ravaged by fires from the Amazon rainforest in Brazil through the world’s largest wetlands to the dry forests of Bolivia, breaking a previous record for the number of fires seen in a year until 9/11.

Satellite data analyzed by Brazil’s space research agency Inpe has so far recorded 346,112 fire hotspots in all 13 South American countries, surpassing the early 2007 record of 345,322 hotspots in a data series dating back to 1998 .

A Reuters photographer traveling in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon this week witnessed massive fires burning through vegetation along roads, blackening the landscape and leaving trees like burnt matchsticks.

Canada’s fire season ranks among worst yet less severe than feared

Smoke billowing from Brazil’s wildfires has darkened the skies over cities like Sao Paulo, fueling a corridor of wildfire smoke seen from space that stretches diagonally across the continent from Colombia in the northwest to Uruguay in the southeast.

Brazil and Bolivia have sent thousands of firefighters to try to control the fires, but remain largely at the mercy of the extreme weather that fuels the fires.

Scientists say that while most fires are caused by humans, recent hot and dry conditions caused by climate change are helping fires spread faster. South America has been hit by a series of heat waves since last year.

“We’ve never had winter,” Karla Longo, an air quality researcher at Inpe, said of Sao Paulo’s weather 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 (90 degrees Fahrenheit) since Saturday.

Hundreds of people marched in Bolivia’s mountainous political capital La Paz to demand action against the fires, holding placards and placards that read: “Bolivia on fire” and “For cleaner air stop burning.”

“Please realize what is really happening in the country, we have lost millions of hectares,” Fernanda Negron, an animal rights activist, said at the protest. “Millions of animals were burned to death.”

In Brazil, a drought that began last year has become the worst on record, according to national disaster monitoring agency Cemaden.

“Overall, the 2023-2024 drought is the most intense, long-lasting in some regions and extensive in recent history, at least in data since 1950,” said Ana Paula Cunha, a drought researcher at Cemaden.

The highest number of fires this month are in Brazil and Bolivia, followed by Peru, Argentina and Paraguay, according to Inpe data. Unusually intense fires that hit Venezuela, Guyana and Colombia earlier in the year contributed to the record, but have largely subsided.

Amazon deforestation fires create particularly intense smoke because of the density of burning vegetation, Longo said.

“The sensation you get flying near one of these plumes is like that of an atomic mushroom cloud,” said Inpe’s Longo.

About 9 million square kilometers (3.5 million square miles) of South America was covered in smoke at times, more than half the continent, she said.

Sao Paulo, the most populous city in the Western Hemisphere, earlier this week had the worst air quality globally, higher than famous pollution hotspots such as China and India, according to IQAir.com. Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, was similarly shrouded in smoke.

Smoke exposure will increase the number of people seeking hospital treatment for respiratory problems and may cause thousands of premature deaths, Longo said.

Fire smoke inhalation contributes to an average of 12,000 premature deaths per year in South America, according to a 2023 study in the academic journal Environmental Research: Health.

September is usually the peak month for fires in South America. It is not clear whether the continent will continue to have a large number of fires this year.

While rain is forecast next week for south-central Brazil, where Sao Paulo is located, drought conditions are expected to continue into October in northern Brazil’s Amazon region and the central-west agricultural region.

(Reporting by Jake Spring and Stefanie Eschenbacher in Sao Paulo; Additional reporting by Santiago Limachi and Monica Machicao in La Paz; Editing by Katy Daigle and Sandra Maler)

Photo: Smoke rises as fires spread through Brasilia National Forest, Brazil, in the middle of the dry season, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)