Environmental activists warn that if the Amazon reaches a point of no return, the rainforest could become a dry savannah, no longer habitable for much of its wildlife. If this happens, it could start emitting carbon -- the major driver of climate change.
The fires are burning at the highest rate since the country's space research center, the National Institute for Space Research , began tracking them in 2013, the center said Tuesday. There have been a total of 72,843 fires in Brazil this year, with more than half in the Amazon region, INPE said. That's more than an 80% increase compared with the same period last year.The Amazon is often referred to as the planet's lungs, producing 20% of the oxygen in the earth's atmosphere.
— Shannon Sims August 20, 2019 Read MoreDramatic images and videos on social media show giant plumes of smoke rising from the greenery, and lines of fire leaving blackened waste in their wake.The smoke has reached all the way to Sao Paolo, more than 1,700 miles away. Images from the city show the sky pitch black in the middle of the afternoon, the sky and sun blanketed by smoke and ash.
Produced by @CopernicusEU's atmosphere monitoring service, it shows the smoke reaching the Atlantic coast and São Paulo 🇧🇷— WMO | OMM August 20, 2019 The Amazon river stretches across several of these South American countries, but the majority -- more than two-thirds -- of the rainforest lies in Brazil.According to the INPE, more than one and a half soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being destroyed every minute of every day.
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