Huge areas of the Amazon, which serves as the lungs of the planet by taking in carbon dioxide and producing oxygen, are burning. Smoke from the widespread fires have turned day into night in Sao Paulo. The fires have covered the Brazilian city of San Paulo in dark smoke, and raising concerns that the rainforest, which is one of the most biologically diverse regions on earth.
The recent Amazon fires have been widespread and some happened rather suddenly. Farmers cleared land for agriculture and also burned areas of rainforest for further development. Cleared rainforests in this region are typically used for cattle farming and growing soybeans, and much of the land-clearing is done illegally. One contributing factor to the fires in the Amazon is the fact that it is the dry season there, the time of year when wildfires tend to break out from human activities, either intentionally or by accident.
The Amazon, which spans 2.12 million square miles, sucks up about a quarter of the 2.4 billion metric 57 tons of carbon that global forests absorb each year. However, the ability of the rainforest to pull in more carbon than it releases is diminishing weakened by changing weather patterns, deforestation and increasing tree mortality (死亡率), among other factors.
According to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, the fires have led to a clear increase in carbon monoxide- emissions as well as planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, posing a threat to human health and aggravating global warming.
If the Amazon were to turn into a consistent net source of carbon emissions, it would accelerate global warming while also leading to a huge loss in species that are not found anywhere else on earth.
