The Amazon forest which produces 20 per cent of the oxygen in our planet’s atmosphere is burning at a record rate. Amazon, which covers 2.1 million square miles, housing thousands of species of plants and animals, is often referred to as the “lungs of the planet”.
Amazon Rainforest Fire Live Updates
It is pretty obvious and the true fact that the world would severely change if the rainforest were to disappear, impacting the whole thing from farming to the fresh water we drink.
Previous this month, Brazil also declared a state of emergency over the increasing number of fires in the region. This year so far, the officials have recorded more than 74,000 fires held in Brazil which is nearly double of 2018’s total of about 40,000 fires. The outpouring marks rise in 83 per cent in the wildfires over the same period of 2018, as per to the Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.
Wildfires rage in the Amazon
Amazonas, which is the largest state in Brazil announced a state of emergency on Monday.
The reason behind the fire, in the meantime are mainly linked to people clearing out the land for farming or ranching. As we know that the rainforest is typically wet and humid, in the month of July and August, the beginning of the dry season, are the driest months of the areas, with activity climaxing by early September and ending by mid-November, as per to the NASA.
Researcher Alberto Setzer on the other hand said, “There is nothing abnormal about the climate this year or the rainfall in the Amazon region, which is just a little below average.”
He added, “The dry season creates the favourable conditions for the use and spread of fire, but starting a fire is the work of humans, either deliberately or by accident.”
Some of the satellite images have been revealed which show fires in the Brazilian states of Amazonas, Rondonia, Para as well as Mato Grosso. The mostly affected area is Amazonas as per to Euronews.
The effects of damage to the Amazon go far beyond Brazil as well as its neighbours. The rainforest of that area itself produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen along with 10% of the world’s known biodiversity. The Amazon is mainly denoted to as “the lungs of the planet” and it plays a significant role in regulating the climate of the atmosphere.
NASA through its official twitter account posted a satellite picture of Amazon fire and tweeted, “Smoke from wildfires in the #AmazonRainforest spreads across several Brazilian states in this natural-color image taken by a @NASAEarth instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite. Although it is fire season in Brazil, the number of fires may be record-setting: https://go.nasa.gov/2zbdf9f”
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