Deforestation and Wildfires in Brazil Contributing to ‘Most Intense and Widespread Drought in History’

Brazil is facing its worst drought on record, fueled by widespread deforestation and wildfire destruction in the Amazon and surrounding regions, scientists say.

The destruction hinders the area’s natural water cycle, especially its crucial “flying river” phenomenon. As the trees in the Eastern Amazon and Cerrado regions absorb rainfall brought about by moisture coming from the Atlantic, they later release water vapor into the air through transpiration, which then brings rainfall to much of Brazil and other parts of South America. 

But the trees the process requires are being destroyed, leading to rivers drying up and areas that were once green now resembling deserts.

Luciana Gatti, a climate researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, told The Washington Post, “This is a process connected from the bottom to the top, with the flying rivers at the top being weakened, and the earth being weakened at the bottom, erasing natural fountains and reducing river levels.”

Nearly 40% of the Amazon’s most vital areas are unprotected, Reuters reported Wednesday. That includes a large part of the Amazon’s northeast, nestled against the Atlantic Ocean, which holds an immense amount of carbon compared to the rest of the region. 

As the Amazon’s northeast is being destroyed, not only is it disrupting the water cycle and leading to further droughts elsewhere, but it’s also releasing an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere.

“This is the first time that a drought has covered all the way from the North to the country’s Southeast,” Ana Paula Cunha, a researcher at CEMADEN, Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters, said in a statement last week. “It is the most intense and widespread drought in history.”

Amid the destruction, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva recently flew into the Amazon. “It seems to me that things are getting worse, year after year after year,” he said. 

“In the Pantanal we’ve had the worst drought in the last 73 years… This is a problem that we have to fix because otherwise humanity is going to destroy our planet,” Lula added. “We cannot destroy that which we rely on for our life.”

^{Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on a flight over the Pantanal on July 31, 2024. Ricardo Stuckert / Lula Oficial}

The Cerrado region in the country’s southeast, which is also a crucial part of the water cycle, is in the midst of its worst drought in at least 700 years, a new study shows.

The team examined geological data to “extend the perception of drought caused by global warming to a period long before the weather station’s records began,” Francisco William da Cruz Junior, a professor at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Geosciences and one of the study’s authors, told the São Paulo Research Foundation.

“This proved that the Cerrado is drier than it was and that the dry weather is associated with the disruption to the hydrological cycle caused by the rise in temperature due to human activity, especially greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

More than 59% of the country is under stress from drought. In São Paolo, Brazil’s most populated city with more than 21 million residents, wildfires have reduced air quality to the second lowest in the world, The Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, the city’s Pinheiros River turned green from pollution and drought. 

“You can put this in capital letters,” Gatti said. “It will get worse and worse. We are heading toward an apocalyptical situation, and unfortunately, we only wake up at the last minute.”