The EU’s climate monitoring system shows that the average emissions generated by the fires in 2024 will be the highest recorded since 2007. Amazonas and Mato do Grosso do Sul are the hardest hit states.
(DW) The total accumulated carbon emissions from this year’s forest fires in Brazil have been higher than the average recorded for fires in the country in almost 20 years, according to data from Copernicus, the European Union’s (EU) climate change monitoring program, released on Monday (23/09). These emissions are mainly driven by fires in the Pantanal and Amazon biomes.
In Brazil, total accumulated emissions from fires during the year 2024 exceeded the average, reaching around 183 megatonnes of carbon by September 19, according to data from the Copernicus Observatory Atmospheric Monitoring Service (Cams), following a similar trajectory to that recorded in 2007, when these emissions hit a record high. In September alone, forest fires released 65 megatonnes of carbon.
The rates of carbon emissions resulting from fires in the Amazon region, particularly in Amazonas, and in Mato Grosso do Sul, were constantly above average – even surpassing the national and regional records. Emissions in these two states were the highest ever recorded in the last 22 years, in Amazonas at 38 megatonnes and in Mato Grosso do Sul at 25 megatonnes.
In Bolivia, this year’s forest fires indicate that the country has already reached the highest annual total recorded by Cams, at almost 76 megatonnes, surpassing the 2010 record of 73 megatonnes.
Copernicus pointed out that this situation seriously affects air quality throughout the region and emphasized that the occurrence of these fires is algorithmically unusual. In Brazil, the fires have been driven by a historic drought.
“The extremely high temperatures that South America has faced in recent months, the long-term drought indicated by low soil moisture and other climatological factors have probably contributed to the significant increase in the scale of emissions from fires, smoke, and impacts on air quality,” Copernicus said in a statement.
Smoke reaches across the Atlantic
Mark Parrington, senior scientist at Cams, noted that “the displacement of smoke is having repercussions far beyond the areas close to where the fires are active in Brazil, even reaching the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The scale of this displacement and the impact on air quality are indicators of the size and intensity of the fires.”
Forest fires and emissions have been damaging air quality across the continent, with smoke covering an area stretching from Ecuador to the state of São Paulo, says the European program’s climate monitoring service.
Cams uses satellite analyses of active fires around the world to identify locations and estimate how much greenhouse gas emissions, carbon, particulate matter and pollution related to burning vegetation are being released.
The system’s data already calculated peaks in gas emissions in states such as Amazonas and Mato Grosso do Sul, when the smoke was already covering municipalities such as Manaus. Since then, the health-damaging gases have only spread, as DW showed, bringing down the air quality in almost all capitals.
rc/cn (EFE, ots)