Amazon Fires & Climate Rage

Understanding the Amazon Fires

This New York Times piece is the best explainer I’ve read on the extent of the fires currently burning in the Amazon Rainforest. It places this August’s fires in the context of the previous decade.

Image: NYT. Description: A map illustrating the extent of fires burning in August in the Brazilian Amazon.

In the years following 2005, there was a very significant reduction in deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon, as a result of environmental protection policies.

Image: NYT. Description: A graph of annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The numbers show large spikes up to 10,000 square miles in the 1990s and early 2000s, followed by a significant reduction post 2005.

However, in recent years Brazil’s deforestation numbers are on the rise again. Herton Escobar reports in Science Magazine:

“Recent data have clearly shown that deforestation in Brazil is on the rise. From January through the end of July, 6800 square kilometers [2625 square miles] were cleared, according to INPE [Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research], 50% more than in the same period last year. But Bolsonaro called the data “a lie” and had INPE’s director, physicist Ricardo Galvão, fired in early August.”

Julia Rosen at LA Times covered the consequences of losing rainforest area in the Amazon.

James Temple at MIT Technology Review explores whether “deforestation will push the world’s largest rainforest to a tipping point, where spiraling feedback effects convert much of the forest into savannah”.

The reasoning behind the rainforest tipping point idea goes like this. Although you may think that clouds from afar bring rain to forests, we now know that the Amazon rainforest produces half of its own rainfall. The way it works is that trees suck up water, which evaporates through leaves, seeding new clouds that rain over the forest. Through this cycle, trees in the Amazon can recycle the water brought in by clouds from the Atlantic five to six times over.

In fact, you can even see this process.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory (Public Domain) Via Wikimedia. Click through for image description.

The picture above shows the Amazon during the dry season. The tiny dew-like white spots are very likely clouds created by the process of ‘evapotranspiration’ — they’re the rain clouds that the forest creates. (You can read more about this remarkable process here and here.)

By deforesting the