The Amazon could soon reach the “point of no return” fuelled by the worst drought-fulled wildfires in decades, according to a top Brazilian rainforest.
Renowned climate change scientist Carlos Nobre, 73, warned that the world now risks “losing the Amazon” thanks to fires illegally started by humans for agricultural purposes.
“The criminals realised that satellites only detect fires when the fire spreads to 30 or 40 square meters (320 to 430 square feet),” Mr Noble told AFP during an interview. “This gives them time to leave the area before being arrested.”
Mr Nobre said the fires consuming chunks of the Amazon risked accelerating its transition into dry savannah grasslands:
“If global warming continues and we do not completely stop deforestation, degradation and fires, by 2050, we will have passed the point of no return,” he warned. “In 30 to 50 years, we will have lost at least 50 per cent of the forest.
The record wave of wildfires, fuelled by the severe drought linked to climate change and deforestation, is wreaking havoc across South America. So far, it has left up to 80% of Brazil blanketed in smoke – with millions of hectares of forest and farmland burning through Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru.
In one of the biggest hospitals in the capital, Brasilia, the number of patients treated for respiratory problems recently was more than 20 times higher than usual. According to pollsters Datafolha, at least 40% of Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte residents and 29% in Rio de Janeiro say their health was affected “very much” by pollution.
Neighbouring Bolivia on Monday declared a national disaster due to forest fires affecting most of its Santa Cruz department. Authorities said 7.2 million hectares have burned since last week.
Meanwhile, Mr Nobre said an increase in warming to 2.5C by 2050 would trigger new tipping points, including “losing the Amazon” outright. During his interview with AFP, he told the agency that among the measures he advocated to reduce climate warming was accelerating the transition to renewable energy and mass planting trees in cities to act as sponges for carbon dioxide.
Trees can help lower urban temperatures by up to 4.5C and increase humidity: “Urban sponges are a very important solution worldwide.”
It’s Brazil’s worst drought since records began in 1950, with huge tributaries that feed the mighty river plunging to record-low levels, upending lives and threatening endangered dolphins.
Rio Negro, one of the Amazon River’s most significant tributaries near the city of Manaus in Amazonas state, is at record lows for this time of year. According to Brazil’s geological service, the Amazon’s water levels are falling at around 7 inches a day.
CNN reported that the river’s characteristic jet-black waters usually course through its thick maze of channels, but satellite images now show that it shrank, with huge swathes of the riverbed exposed.
Lincoln Alves, a research scientist at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, shared a study that examines how climate change will impact drought and heat extremes in Brazil.
Mr Alves, who recently visited the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW, said it highlights Brazil’s vulnerability and the need for adaptive strategies.
He told CNN the Rio Negro is seeing “extreme reductions” as temperatures soar and the region struggles with a shortage of rainfall.
“Under global warming, extreme events have been increasing in the last decade and are projected to increase in the future with every increment of global warming,” the abstract of the September report read. “The potential increase in compound drought and hot events may induce a complex web of impacts on societies, ecosystems, and economies, including crop failure, wildfires, and water scarcity.
“This is particularly concerning for Brazil, where it has been demonstrated to be vulnerable to recent extreme climate events.”
In February, Europe’s climate monitor Copernicus announced that for the first time on record, Earth had endured 12 consecutive months of temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than the pre-industrial era – four years earlier than predicted.
Experts had warned that extreme weather events would accelerate sharply at the 1.5C warming mark: “It is not a slow, linear increase,” Mr Nobre explained. In 2024, we are already seeing how the frequency of extreme phenomena is accelerating and breaking records,” he added, citing increased “heatwaves, heavy rains, droughts, forest fires. “
The consequences are stark for local people who rely on the rivers for food, medicine, livelihoods and transport, André Guimarães, executive director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, told CNN.
“We are suffering a situation that has never happened before,” he said, adding, “The reduction of the river flows is absolutely enormous.” Experts noted little relief is in sight, and while rainfall at current levels could start to replenish rivers, it is not expected for weeks, with the situation likely to worsen.
- This article was originally published by AAP. This article has been shared through a Creative Commons license.
