DROUGHT IN THE AMAZON

Why in the News?

The Amazon rainforest has been witnessing intense drought with numerous rivers vital for travel having dried up which has deprived Indigenous communities living in the area of water, food, or medicine in villages.

News in Detail: 

1. The Rio Negro, one of the world’s largest rivers by discharge levels, has fallen to a record low level of 13.59 metres in Brazil.
2. Amazon, called the planet’s lungs, covers nearly 7 million square kilometres, (about the area of Australia) and stores more than 150 billion metric tonnes of carbon.
3. The present spell of drought has persisted since June, 2023 which has led to drop in water levels and death of high numbers of fish and river dolphins, known as boto.
4. The dead rotting carcasses have contaminated the water supply in some areas, forcing residents to use it for cooking, bathing, and drinking.
5. The water scarcity has stalled the operations of a major hydropower dam in the region and has left people in remote villages with limited access to food, and other supplies.
6. The extreme dry conditions have made the rainforest more vulnerable to wildfires, given that already the Amazonas state has witnessed 2,700 blazes in this month, the highest ever noted for the month of October in the last 25 years.

Reasons for the severe drought condition:

1. The severe drought is a result of two simultaneous natural events that have hindered cloud formation, reducing the already low rainfall levels in the region.
2. One of them is the onset of El Nino:
   1. El Nino refers to an abnormal warming of surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
   2. This weather pattern is known to increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records causing intense heating in the region.
   3. It also triggers more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the ocean.
3. The other natural event is the unusually high temperatures of water in the northern tropical Atlantic Ocean. 
   1. The warmer ocean waters cause the heated air to rise into the atmosphere, which then reaches the Amazon rainforest.
   2. The warm air inhibits clouds formation, causing rainfall to drop sharply.

A grim future:

1. Studies have revealed that with rising global temperatures, the Amazon will experience longer and more frequent droughts.
2. Also, with the current rate of burning fossil fuels by humans can lead to major drought 9 out of every 10 years by the year 2060 in the rainforest.
3. It has also become evident from a study that Amazon has become slower at recovering from longer periods of drought over the past 20 years and is nearing its tipping point.
   1. Breaching the tipping point means that the rainforest would transform from a lush green forest into a drier open savanna
   2. It then starts releasing a large amount of stored carbon, which would, in turn, exacerbate global warming.
4. In the last 50 years, between 17 and 20 per cent of the Amazon has been destroyed mainly due to deforestation, which demands for efforts to curb deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.