Brazil accounts for 76% of South America's wildfires
In the past 24 hours, Brazil recorded 5,132 fire outbreaks, accounting for 75.9 percent of all fire-affected areas in South America on Tuesday (Sep. 10), according to the National Institute for Space Research’s (Inpe) Fire Program. The increase was driven by the Cerrado biome, which surpassed the Amazon in active fires, registering 2,489 outbreaks between Monday (9) and Tuesday.
Ane Alencar, director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam) and one of the country’s top fire experts, expressed concern over the spread of fires across much of Brazil, particularly due to the early arrival of the critical fire season. “We’re in a very precarious situation, especially since we don’t know what the coming months will bring. We don't want it to be like the end of last year, when fires worsened in the Amazon through October, and the rains didn’t start until January. I’m very worried about what will happen after September,” she said.
In the first ten days of September, the number of fire outbreaks across Brazil more than doubled compared to 2023. A total of 37,492 outbreaks were recorded, up from 15,613 in the same period last year. According to Ane Alencar, this surge is driven by a combination of factors, including the second consecutive year of El Niño, followed by La Niña, global warming, and human activity. "In Brazil, we've typically seen severe droughts in the Amazon, parts of the Cerrado, and the central region of the country, but witnessing multiple biomes affected simultaneously is unusual,” she explained.
