LONDON, 17 August, 2020 – Despite global promises to act on climate change, the Earth continues to warm. The annual planetary temperature confirms that the last 10 years were on average 0.2°C warmer than the first 10 years of this century. And each decade since 1980 has been warmer than the decade that preceded it.
The year 2019 was also one of the three warmest years since formal temperature records began in the 19th century. The only warmer years – in some datasets but not all – were 2016 and 2015. And all the years since 2013 have been warmer than all other years in the last 170.
The link with fossil fuel combustion remains unequivocal: carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increased by 2.5 parts per million (ppm) in 2019 alone. These now stand at 409 ppm. The global average for most of human history has hovered around 285 ppm.
Two more greenhouse gases – nitrous oxide and methane, both of them more short-lived – also increased measurably.
This millennium has been warmer than any comparable period since the Industrial Revolution.”
The study, in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is a sobering chronicle of the impact of climate change in the decade 2010-2019 and the year 2019 itself. It is the 30th such report, it is signed by 528 experts from 61 countries, and it is a catalogue of unwelcome records achieved and uncomfortable extremes surpassed.
July 2019 was the hottest month on record. Record high temperatures were measured in more than a dozen nations across Africa, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean. In North America, Alaska scored its hottest year on record.
The Arctic as a whole was warmer than in any year except 2016. Australia achieved a new nationally average daily temperature high of 41.9°C on 18 December, breaking the previous 2013 record by 1.6°C. But even Belgium and the Netherlands saw temperatures higher than 40°C.
For the 32nd consecutive year, the world’s alpine glaciers continued to get smaller and retreat further uphill. For the first time on record in inland Alaska, when measured at 26 sites, the active layer of permafrost failed to freeze completely. In September, sea ice around the Arctic reached a minimum that tied for the second lowest in the 41 years of satellite records.
Catalogue of Extremes
Global sea levels set a new high for the eighth consecutive year and are now 87.6mm higher than the 1993 average, when satellite records began. At a depth of 700 metres, ocean temperatures reached new records, and the sea surface temperatures on average were the highest since 2016.
Drought conditions led to catastrophic wildfires in Australia, in Indonesia, Siberia and in the southern Amazon forests of Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. And around the equator, meteorologists catalogued 96 named tropical storms: the average for 1981 to 2010 was 82. In the North Atlantic, just one storm, Hurricane Dorian, killed 70 people and caused $3.4bn (£2.6bn) in damage in the Bahamas.
“This millennium has been warmer than any comparable period since the Industrial Revolution. A number of extreme events, such as wildfires, heatwaves and droughts, have at least part of their root linked to the rise in global temperature,” said Robert Dunn, of the UK Met Office, one of the contributors.
“And of course the rise in global temperature is linked to another climate indicator, the ongoing rise in emissions in greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane.” – Climate News Network
The Amazon fire season is building momentum, with 227 fires covering nearly 128,000 hectares, reported between May 28 and August 10. By today, that number rose to 266 fires.
More than 220 of the May 28 to June 10 fires occurred in Brazil, with just six in Bolivia, and one in Peru. 95% of the Brazilian fires were illegal and in violation of the nation’s 120-day ban on fires. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has called the 2020 reports of deforestation and fires a “lie.”
Most Amazon blazes are set, with land grabbers, ranchers and farmers using fire as a deforestation tool, and as a means of converting rainforest to pasture and croplands.
Fourteen of the Brazilian fires were within protected areas. The most heavily impacted of these were Jamanxim and Altamira national forests in Pará state — areas long notorious for criminal land grabbing.
Natural-color image of smoke from wildfires burning in the Amazon basin on August 20, 2019, taken by the Suomi NPP using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite)
A total of 227 fires covering 127,866 hectares (315,963 acres) — an area nearly twice as large as New York City — were reported between May 28 and August 10. The number of fires is increasing as the region enters the peak fire season, according to an analysis of satellite data by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP).
As of today, August 13, that number has risen to 266 fires.
More than 220 of those observed between May 28 and August 10 occurred in Brazil, with just six in Bolivia and one in Peru. Over 95% of the Brazilian blazes were illegal, violating the nation’s 120 day fire ban enacted by President Jair Bolsonaro on July 15. The illegal blazes are occurring despite the advance deployment of the Brazilian Army to the Amazon in May to prevent fires being set.
Major fires in Brazil in 2020
Fire data from MAAP’s Amazon Fire Monitoring App is up to date through August 11, 2020
Only two of the reported blazes were confirmed forest fires, covering 1,447 hectares (388 acres) in Brazil. The rest took place on lands cleared of forest in the past two years, underscoring the significance of deforestation as a catalyst for fire in the Amazon.
“We argue that the central issue is actually deforestation and [that] the fires are actually a smoking indicator of this forest loss,” the report states.
Last year, MAAP analyzed archived satellite imagery from Planet Explorer, and discovered that many of 2019’s fires burned areas deforested earlier that same year. Based on that finding, MAAP predicted 2020 fire locations would follow suit, occurring in areas that saw major deforestation earlier this year. Currently, four of the seven areas MAAP predicted would burn in 2020 have, according to Matt Finer, senior research specialist and director of MAAP.
This week, President Bolsonaro denied both this year’s fires and 2020 deforestation in remarks during the second Presidential Summit of the Letícia Pact for the Amazon. “There is no fire outbreak, not a quarter of a hectare was deforested,” Bolsonaro said. “It is a lie, this story that the Amazon burns with fire.”
The latest data released by INPE, the country’s National Institute for Space Research, found that 9,205 square kilometers — an area about eleven-and-a-half times as big as New York City — were deforested in the Brazilian Amazon over the past 12 months, an increase of 34.5% over the comparative period in the previous year. The official annual estimate of deforestation between August 1, 2019 and July 31, 2020 is expected to top 11,000 square kilometers when it is released this fall.
INPE: Accumulated Amazon Deforestation August 1 to July 31 (sq km), Source: Mongabay.com
MAAP monitors fires in the Amazon in near real time, using the Real-time Amazon Fire Monitoring app to pinpoint areas with elevated aerosol emissions, caused by large amounts of biomass burning. A “major fire” is defined as one with an aerosol index of >1 (appearing cyan-green to red on the app). Once an alert is detected, MAAP analyzes high resolution satellite imagery to confirm the fire. MAAP also compares satellite imagery from year to year to determine if the fire broke out following a recent deforestation event. This measure is different than the widely reported “hotspots” from satellites, which already number in the tens of thousands this dry season.
“We go two steps further than the commonly reported (and often misleading in my opinion) heat-based alerts, to much more precisely track major fires,” Finer said.
Both NASA and INPE, Brazil’s national space research institute, use satellites with infrared “heat-sensing” technology to detect hotspots. These may have a limited capacity to detect smaller fires and sub-canopy fires, which can be substantial in tropical forests.
An IBAMA environmental agency agent views illegally felled trees inside Jamanxim National Forest in 2014. Amazon illegal deforestation typically takes place in several steps: valuable trees are logged and sold, then the rest are cut, left to dry, and burned in preparation for turning the land into cattle pasture and croplands. Image courtesy of IBAMA.
In Brazil, 14 of the reported 2020 fires arose within protected areas. The most heavily impacted are the Jamanxim and Altamira National Forests in Pará state — conserved areas notorious for criminal land grabbing and illegal deforestation.
The Jamanxim National Forest was hard hit by deforestation in 2019, losing more than 3% of its forest cover in May 2019 alone. Those living in the area say Bolsonaro’s anti-environment rhetoric has emboldened land speculators and loggers to clear the protected lands and sell the property to ranchers at inflated rates. While sometimes prosecuted for these violations, most law breakers never pay their fines, and the government — under the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations — periodically has issued or urged amnesties to illegal deforesters and land grabbers.
Giant otters (Pteronura brasiliensis). While Amazon fires are known to destroy large swaths of habitat, detailed studies on annual wildlife losses due to fires are largely lacking. Image by Charles J. Sharp, Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
The Altamira National Forests, home to the giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis), Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis), and the jaguar (Panthera onca), saw an 85% rise in deforestation in 2019 over the prior year. Illegal tin mining, gold mining, logging, and cattle ranching have escalated deforestation in the protected area.
“We emphasize, however, that these fires [in Jamanxim and Altamira National Forests] were burning recently deforested areas, not [naturally occurring] forest fires,” says the MAAP report, “and so, again, the primary issue is deforestation.”
Citation: Finer M, Nicolau A, Villa L (2020) 200 Major Amazon Fires in 2020: Tracker Analysis. MAAP.
Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter @lizkimbrough
The Amazon Rainforest is a vital ecosystem to the world.
The Destruction Of The Amazon, Explained
The Amazon rainforest has faced encroachment and deforestation for a long time. But it wasn’t until Brazil’s military dictatorship came to power in the 1970s that deforestation spiked, becoming a big business in the Amazon. When that expansion reached the state of Acre, it met resistance. Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper from the region, took the fight to protect the Amazon from the depths of the rainforest to the global stage. In the process, he gave his life. But the fight he started lives on.
The War For The Amazon’s Most Valuable Trees
The Amazon is a three-part series about the world’s largest rainforest, why it’s in jeopardy, and the people trying to save it.
The Amazon rainforest has faced encroachment and deforestation for a long time. But it wasn’t until Brazil’s military dictatorship came to power in the 1970s that deforestation spiked, becoming a big business in the Amazon. When that expansion reached the state of Acre, it met resistance. Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper from the region, took the fight to protect the Amazon from the depths of the rainforest to the global stage. In the process, he gave his life. But the fight he started lives on.
Brazil’s Indigenous Land Is Being Invaded
Brazil has over 900,000 indigenous people, most of whom live in the Amazon. After centuries of persecution, they were given extensive rights under a new Constitution in the 1980s, including the right to claim and win back their traditional lands. Since then, hundreds of indigenous lands have been demarcated and protected by the Brazilian government.
But in the last few years, those lands have come under attack by landowners, ranchers, loggers, and farmers who want access to the resources inside these indigenous lands. And since Jair Bolsonaro became president, the number of invasions into indigenous lands has skyrocketed.
