Drought in Brazil reaches unprecedented proportions

Factors contributing to this phenomenon include climate change and the El Niño phenomenon.

According to Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring Natural Disasters (Cemaden), South America’s largest country is facing its worst drought in recent history. The agency also noted that more than a third of the country has been hit by “extreme drought.”

Ana Paula Cunha of Cemaden told G1 that Brazil had never recorded “such a widespread and intense drought as this” since records began in 1950. “Previously, only isolated regions suffered from drought cycles, but this time it is a widespread phenomenon,” she added.

The current phenomenon also threatens hydropower production, as some regions are isolated and face low water levels in rivers, which therefore become unnavigable.

Experts agree that the drought has no single, identifiable cause but is rather the result of a combination of factors, including El Niño, which has raised temperatures and reduced precipitation across the country. Atmospheric congestion caused by stationary high-pressure zones has also played a major role, hindering the passage of cold fronts that could increase rainfall. In addition, a warmer northern tropical Atlantic has led to an increasingly long dry season.

Some 2,700 human-caused fires have broken out in Brazil’s southern state of Sao Paulo in the past week, destroying more than 59,000 hectares, including vast swaths of sugar cane, one of the country’s main exports.

“Over the past few days, we have had an explosive combination of three factors: high temperatures, very strong winds and very low relative humidity,” explained Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas.

Brazil’s dry season usually lasts from August to October. However, climate experts say this June was the country’s “driest, hottest and windiest” month.

In addition to the difficult situation in the state of Sao Paulo, record fires have also been detected in the Cerrado plateau, a tropical savannah, and in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, a biodiverse area full of different species of plants and animals. The Pantanal, located between the Amazon and Sao Paulo, lost about 600,000 hectares to the flames in June. Scientists said the fires in the Pantanal were “40% more intense due to climate change.”

Satellite images monitored by Brazilian environmental institute MapBiomas showed in June that the Amazon and Pantanal regions were facing a severe water loss. The Pantanal biome was the driest in 2023, down 61% from the historical average in 1985. The Amazon rainforest experienced a historic drought from June to November 2023, caused by low rainfall and persistently high temperatures.