In the north of Brazil, dried rivers have left communities accessible only by boat landlocked. In the central west, fires are razing what were once wetlands. And in the densely populated southeast, smoke from tens of thousands of blazes is choking cities.
Even in a country that has grown increasingly inured to the damage wrought by drought — which in recent years has dried out swaths of the Amazon forest, killed scores of river dolphins and caused some territory to be reclassified as arid — recent scenes of privation and struggle have been startling.
Along the Rio Madeira in Amazonas state, locals are trekking miles on the hot sands of the dried riverbed in search of water. In the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, fires have scorched an estimated 20,000 square kilometers (7,720 square miles). The vast Cerrado region is in the grip of the worst drought in at least 700 years, according to researchers at the University of São Paulo. And the air in São Paulo state has grown so heavy with forest fire smoke that authorities have urged people to avoid physical activity outside.
Much of the crisis, scientists say, can be explained by climate change, which is driving temperatures higher and making rainfall more unpredictable. But it’s been exacerbated by the deforestation of the Amazon, which has the potential to disrupt rainfall patterns across much of South America.
“We have to focus on why this is happening,” said Philip Fearnside, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazon Research. “This is global warming and deforestation.”
Fearnside and other climate scientists have warned for years that the impacts of the Amazon’s destruction would be felt well beyond its borders.
“This drought is evidence,” he said.
The biome is hydrated by a unique rainfall pattern known as “flying rivers.” Moisture blows in from the Atlantic Ocean and forms rain over the eastern Amazon. The dense forest canopy absorbs the water, then releases much of it back into the atmosphere as vapor to be carried farther west. The cycle repeats until the flying rivers collide with the Andes mountains, where they turn southward into central Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.
The Río de la Plata basin, which extends from Bolivia to Argentina, is particularly dependent on what scientists call “cascading moisture recycling.”
Reliant on trees, the hydraulic system is now being frayed by deforestation. The destruction has been most acute in the southeastern Amazon, precisely where the moisture from the Atlantic is first deposited. The loss of vegetation is reducing the volume of water that’s reaching the continent.
This effect is being compounded by deforestation elsewhere. The Cerrado region, which has far fewer environmental protections than the Amazon, has been decimated in recent years by forest loss. Eight of the 10 municipalities that posted the highest rates of deforestation last year were concentrated in the region.
In a country where agricultural gains often come at the loss of the natural environment, many think “forest is a waste of land,” said Luciana Gatti, a climate researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. “This is a process connected from the bottom to the top, with the flying rivers at the top being weakened, and the earth being weakened at the bottom, erasing natural fountains and reducing river levels.”
2024 might be a year of historic drought in Brazil, she said. But don’t expect the record to stand for long.
“You can put this in capital letters,” she said. “It will get worse and worse. We are heading toward an apocalyptical situation, and unfortunately we only wake up at the last minute.”