Brazil fire brigades fight Amazon blazes off to torrid start in 2024

Fire brigades in the Brazilian Amazon are battling blazes off to their worst start in 20 years for the rainforest, according to government satellite data, following a record-breaking drought aggravated by global warming.

Smoke blanketed the horizon along the Transamazonian Highway outside the town of Apui on Friday, in the south of Brazil's Amazonas state, where firefighters have gathered from up to 600 km away (350 miles) to combat the unusually early and intense fires this year.

Firefighters in bright yellow protective clothing worked through the night to smother the flames using back-mounted water sprayers or leaf blowers as enormous blazes advanced over forests and pastures alike, leaving a vast charred expanse in their wake.  

The fires threatening the rainforest may pose a tough test for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has staked his global reputation on Brazil's environmental stewardship ahead of hosting the United Nations COP30 climate summit next year.

Fires ringing Apui and other towns across the Amazon often start on cattle ranches where locals are converting the jungle into pasture. Extremely dry conditions over the past year have made it easier for blazes to advance into the rainforest, which rarely burns under normal conditions.

"The way the climate is changing, getting drier and hotter, year after year we're seeing the fire entering deeper into the virgin forest," said Domingos da Silva Araujo, local head of the government's Prevfogo brigade fighting wildfires around Apui. The area is a tinder box after more than a month without a drop of rain, he said.

The area burned in the Brazilian Amazon nearly doubled in the first seven months of 2024 from the same period of last year to the largest since 2004, according to satellite data from government space research agency INPE. The fires consumed an area of 26,246 square km (10,134 square miles) in the period – larger than the US state of Maryland, or about the size of Rwanda.

Conditions are only expected to worsen, as fires in the Amazon typically peak in August and September before seasonal rains arrive.

Last year's rains came late and were weaker than normal due to an El Nino weather pattern supercharged by climate change, scientists say, leaving the rainforest especially vulnerable to this year's fires.

The same factors drove fires in Brazil's Pantanal wetlands to a record high in June, INPE data showed, leading Lula to convene an emergency government task force limiting damage to that biome.

Although Lula has made a high-profile promise to end illegal deforestation in the Amazon, a study released this week indicated that fire can release more carbon dioxide from the region, contributing to global warming.

Following early victories in the fight against illegal logging of the rainforest, Lula now faces a tougher task to end deforestation.

In July, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose from a year earlier for the first time in 15 months, according to preliminary INPE data released this week. The government stressed that deforestation is still down 27% in the year to date, compared with the first seven months of 2023.