Amazon Drought News

The great drought and megafires that the Amazon experienced in recent years caused the death of 2.5 billion trees and vines in the Lower Tapajós River Basin, one of the…

The year 2021 is a La Niña year, and La Niña events typically lead to droughts in southeastern Brazil where São Paulo, the world’s fourth largest city, is located. La…

A new “vulnerability index” for the world’s tropical rainforests will use satellite data to assess the impact of growing threats such as land clearance and rising temperatures on forests, in…

As central and southern Brazil, along with a third of the nation's people, face the worst drought in more than 90 years, Jair Bolsonaro wrestles with how to supply water and electricity to agribusiness and to the nation.

The climate in the Amazon has been changing over the last few decades. The average temperature in the basin rose about 1º Celsius (1.8° Fahrenheit) between 1979 and 2018, with…

The Amazon has long done its part to balance the global carbon budget, but new evidence suggests the climate scales are tipping in the world’s largest rainforest.  Now, according to…

So far this year, 24 major fires have burned in the Brazilian Amazon, covering an area of 7,167 hectares (17,710 acres). All of the fires were set on land previously…

As the planet warms, it isn’t just humans who are feeling the heat — trees are too. Rising temperatures are disrupting a primary engine of life on Earth: photosynthesis. A…

Something is wrong in the lungs of the world. Decades of burning, logging, mining and development have tipped the scales, and now the Amazon Basin may be emitting more greenhouse…

IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, has reversed itself, allowing Norte Energia, operator of the mega-dam, to divert water flow to turbines, potentially wrecking the river’s Big Bend Indigenous and traditional fishery.

Scientists warn that we are approaching the Amazon biome tipping point, but proposed solutions in Brazil appear stillborn, politically impractical or lack sufficient scale and/or funding.

A plan by Brazil’s Norte Energia, builder and operator of the Belo Monte mega-dam, to drastically reduce Xingu River water flows will be a disaster for habitat, fish, fisheries, and riverine communities, experts say.

As more trees die in the Amazon Basin, the forest’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide weakens. But to understand why trees are dying at a faster rate, researchers first need…

It was another intense year for fires in the Amazon. More than 2,500 major blazes burned across Brazil’s Legal Amazon between May 28 and November 3, according to a fire…

Shifting rainfall patterns, especially those exacerbated by climate change, could drive large parts of the Amazon rainforest to become drier savanna, a new study has found. Rainfall acts like a…

The number of fires burning in standing Amazon rainforest spiked dramatically in recent weeks, threatening the forest’s biodiversity — a richness of flora and fauna not adapted to withstand the…

Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet: the Amazon carries more than five times the volume of world's…

In a step towards understanding the impending Amazon rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, scientists have quantified the knock-on effect that drought and deforestation have on each other for the first time.

Extreme flooding in the Ecuadoran Amazon has caused widespread disarray along the banks of the Bobonaza River, all amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past couple of weeks, the surging…

Dung beetle species populations are moving toward collapse in parts of the Brazilian Amazon apparently due to climate change-driven drought, fires, and other human disturbances.

An intensification in fires, coupled with increasing deforestation and worsening climate change, could rapidly shift the Amazon toward being a carbon source by 2050.

Scientists know from a bevy of studies that the inclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities is critical to holding deforestation at bay across the tropics, even as a tide…

Models and real-world events indicate that, unless action is taken now, up to 70% of the Amazon rainforest could become savanna in under 50 years, with huge carbon releases, destabilizing global climate.

The prevailing narrative about the Brazilian Amazon this past summer was that the world’s largest rainforest was burning. A more accurate assessment would be that vast areas that used to…

The burning of vegetation and the release of climate-warming gases into the atmosphere are conspiring to dry out the Amazon rainforest, according to a new study. “We observed that in…

Small trees in the shade of the canopy are able to thrive during dry spells in the Brazilian Amazon, but those exposed to the sun in forest clearings suffer.

Jair Bolsonaro pledged to leave the Paris accord during his presidential run. But his Amazon agribusiness and mining expansion plans may pose a far bigger threat to forests and global climate.

Severe flood events have become five times more common over the last century as a result of natural atmospheric oscillations and human-driven climate change.

The fires closing in on Erika Berenguer’s research site in Brazil’s eastern Amazon were unlike anything she had seen in years working in the forest. Smoke hung heavy the air.…

On this episode we welcome the godfather of biodiversity, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, to discuss some of the most important environmental issues we’re currently facing and why he believes the next…