Months of little or no rain in Brazil has led to thousands of fires raging out of control. Forests and national parks across Latin America’s largest country are blazing. Satellite images have identified more than 31,000 fires in 15 states last month, according to Ibama, Brazil’s Environmental Protection Agency, however even satellites are being hampered by the thick haze of smoke hanging over the country.
Weathermen are not predicting rain until the end of September, leading to fears that the situation could get worse. August and September are traditionally the times when farmers use fire to clear their fields for the new season, but with little rainfall and high temperatures, this has led to many of these fires getting out of control.
The Ibama site notes, “The Integrated Center for Operational Cooperation (Ciman) reports, ‘The expectation is that it will be a difficult year because of the evidence of intensification of El Niño in the Pacific Ocean,’ said the head of Prevfogo. ‘The El Niño alters rainfall patterns and intensified drought in some regions of Brazil. Since the beginning of the year there have been 36,821 hotspots captured satellite, an increase of 4% over the same period last year.'”
From the Amazon to the Atlantic, Brazil is on fire.
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on August 18, 2015. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption: NASA/Goddard, Lynn Jenner