Experts alarmed

Forest fires now cause horrendous CO2 emissions

Devastating forest fires in several South American countries in February caused the highest CO2 emissions for at least two decades.

According to the EU's Copernicus Earth observation program on Wednesday, an estimated 4.1 megatonnes of CO2 were emitted by the fires in Brazil and as much as 5.2 megatonnes in Venezuela. The Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (Cams) also recorded record emissions of 0.3 megatons in Bolivia.

The smoke caused by the fires led to increased air pollution in densely populated areas, the report continued. According to Copernicus experts, forest fires are normally expected in Bolivia and throughout the Amazon region, especially in September and October.

Historicdrought
Some experts suspect that the climate phenomenon El Niño is responsible for the historic drought in the Amazon basin last year, which triggered large-scale forest fires, damaged crops and dried up important waterways. A study by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group in January concluded that man-made carbon emissions were the main cause. This made droughts from June to November last year 30 times more likely.

Almost 3,000 forest fires were registered in the Brazilian Amazon in February, a record for the month since records began in 1999, according to the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) on Wednesday.