Not long ago, the largest number of fires ever observed occurred in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Because Amazon forests produce 20% of the planet’s oxygen, fires are likely to affect climate change on a global scale.
As a result of satellite observations by INPE, the Brazilian National Space Research Institute, there were 72,843 fires in Brazil this year. More than half of these originate in the Amazon rainforest. This figure is an increase of 80% compared to the same period last year. Since 2013, it has been exceeding the record-high record every year. As stated earlier, the Amazon is known to produce 20% of the oxygen on the planet, and fires are pointed out as a big problem as forest conditions are likely to affect global climate change.
?Just a little alert to the world: the sky randomly turned dark today in São Paulo, and meteorologists believe it’s smoke from the fires burning *thousands* of kilometers away, in Rondônia or Paraguay. Imagine how much has to be burning to create that much smoke(!). SOS? pic.twitter.com/P1DrCzQO6x
— Shannon Sims (@shannongsims) August 20, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
INPE reported 9,507 new fires in the Amazon Basin via satellite imagery on August 15th. The rainforest fire also affected Sao Paulo, thousands of kilometers away, and residents say it was dark during the day.
The World Meteorological Organization has also released images showing how widespread the fire smoke is. The smoke covered half of Brazil’s territory and affected Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay. According to INPE, Amazon burns the rainforest for 1.5 soccer fields every minute. It is pointed out that Brazilian President Zaire Bolsonaro was responsible for the fire. Originally as a captain in the army, he made a pledge to restore the Brazilian economy by exploring the economic possibilities of the Amazon. Based on this, the Brazilian Environment Agency was forced to cut the budget, and the company’s disposal was eased in a form that made logging easier. Environmentalists warn that the president’s business stance may promote the activities of lumberjacks, farmers and miners.
The scale of the Siberian wildfires is underlined by this animation of the huge area of the smoke cloud: more than 5 million km².
For comparison, the EU is about 4.5 million km² and the contiguous US about 8.1 million km².
(Via @anttilip of @IlmaTiede ) pic.twitter.com/RDhntqaDEO— WMO | OMM (@WMO) Aug 12, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
In response to these criticisms, President Zaire Bolsonaru argued that NGOs were responsible for the Amazon fire. He said the Amazon fire would have been started by an environmental NGO that bothers the Brazilian government. However, he said there was no documented record of the question of whether there was evidence. Related information can be found here .