Devastating forest fires in several South American countries in February caused the highest CO2 emissions in at least two decades.
As the EU’s Copernicus Earth Observation Program announced on Wednesday, an estimated 4.1 megatonnes of CO2 were emitted by the fires in Brazil and as much as 5.2 megatonnes in Venezuela. The Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (Cams) also recorded record emissions for Bolivia of 0.3 megatonnes.
The smoke caused by the fires leads to increased air pollution in densely populated areas, the report said. According to Copernicus experts, forest fires are generally expected in Bolivia and throughout the Amazon region, especially in September and October.
Historic drought
Some experts suspect that the El Niño climate phenomenon is responsible for last year’s historic drought in the Amazon basin, which led to widespread forest fires, damaged crops and dried up key waterways. A January study by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group concluded that man-made carbon emissions are the main cause. This made droughts thirty times more likely between June and November last year.
Nearly 3,000 forest fires were recorded in the Brazilian Amazon in February, a record for that month since records began in 1999, the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) said on Wednesday.
Source: Krone
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