Experts say rain ‘won’t extinguish Amazon fires for weeks’
29 August, 2019
Weak rainfall is unlikely to extinguish a record number of fires raging in Brazil’s Amazon anytime soon, with pockets of precipitation through Sept. 10 expected to bring only isolated relief, according to weather data and two experts.
The world’s largest tropical rainforest is being ravaged as the number of blazes recorded across the Brazilian Amazon has risen 79 percent this year through Aug. 25, according to the country’s space research agency.
The fires are not limited to Brazil, with at least 10,000 square kilometers burning in Bolivia near its border with Paraguay and Brazil.
While Brazil’s government has launched a firefighting initiative, deploying troops and military planes, those efforts will only extinguish smaller blazes and help prevent new fires, experts said. Larger infernos can only be put out by rainfall.
The rainy season in the Amazon on average begins in late September and takes weeks to build to widespread rains.
The rain forecast in the next 15 days is concentrated in areas that need it least, according to Maria Silva Dias, a professor of atmospheric sciences at University of Sao Paulo. Less precipitation is expected in parts of the Amazon experiencing the worst fires, she added.
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