Context:– The water levels at Manaus river port, a significant city in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, have plummeted to their lowest in at least 121 years. The Amazon rainforest is reeling from an intense drought. Numerous rivers vital for travel have dried up. As a result, there is no water, food, or medicine in villages of Indigenous communities living in the area.
Trigger for the Acute Drought:
- The Amazon rainforest, often hailed as Earth’s lungs, is grappling with an intense drought.
- Brazilian authorities attribute this severe drought to the El Nino phenomenon, which is causing erratic weather patterns globally.
Factors Contributing to the Drought:
- El Nino Effect: This year’s El Nino has been notably forceful, intensifying the prevailing drought conditions.
- Reduced Rainfall: Specific regions in the Amazon witnessed the lowest rainfall from July to September since 1980.
- Climate Change: Ongoing climatic shifts have altered weather patterns, aggravating the severity of the drought.
- Human Activities: Large-scale environmental projects also play a part in exacerbating the situation.
- Other Weather Event: The other weather event is the unusually high water temperatures in the northern tropical Atlantic Ocean. Due to warmer ocean waters, heated air rises into the atmosphere, which then reaches the Amazon rainforest. The warm air inhibits the formation of clouds, causing rainfall to drop sharply.
Impacts of the Drought:
- Essential rivers for transportation are drying up, disrupting the lives of Indigenous communities.
- The Rio Negro, among the world’s largest rivers, has reached record-low levels.
- Operations at a major hydropower dam are stalled, leaving numerous remote jungle villages stranded, facing shortages of food and supplies.
- The extreme dryness has heightened the vulnerability of the rainforest to wildfires, leading to mass deaths of fish and river dolphins, contaminating water sources.
Likelihood of Escalation:
- Scientists assert that climate change has elevated droughts and extreme heat, rendering forests more susceptible to frequent fires.
- Deforestation and agricultural expansion have weakened the Amazon’s resilience to droughts, leading to increased occurrences of wildfires.
- Previous instances of rise fire counts, especially the record-breaking fires in August and September 2022, are commonly associate to widespread deforestation.
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