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Countries across South America are experiencing drought conditions and the spread of wildfires across regions, as the continent grapples with a double whammy of high temperatures and low rainfall.
Data from Nasa shows two-thirds of South America has much drier soil conditions than usual, as global warming and the El Niño weather phenomenon take their toll.
In Chile, forest fires near towns in the central Valparaiso region had killed at least 64 people and President Gabriel Boric declared a state of emergency on Sunday, and officials expressed fears for a higher death toll in the region popular during the summer.
Clair Barnes, research associate at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, said across the continent there had been “below average seasonal rainfall and above average temperatures”.
“What you get from those two is increased drought conditions,” she said. “There is increased wildfire activity, because the vegetation dries and that makes it more prone to fires taking hold once they have been ignited.”
During 2023, the hottest year on record globally, South American countries also experienced exceptionally warm weather during the southern hemisphere’s winter and spring, with days up to 20C hotter than usual. This was followed by repeated high temperatures in recent months.
“It was dry going into the season,” said Barnes, noting there was not “enough precipitation to replenish to normal [water] levels, because the temperatures are so high you are always losing moisture.”
At the end of January, two-thirds of South America had surface soil moisture in the lowest 30 per cent when compared with the long-term average. In January 2023, 38 per cent of the continent was at the same level, Nasa data shows.
At the same time, data from Copernicus’ Global Fire Assimilation System reports carbon dioxide emissions resulting from wildfires across the top of South America increased significantly this January compared to previous years, notably in Venezuela as well as Bolivia.
In Colombia, the government 10 days ago declared a national disaster, releasing resources to tackle forest fires that raged across the country. By Friday, more than 38,000 hectares of forest had been consumed by about 550 different fires over the past three months, according to the country’s disaster response agency.
In the capital of Bogotá, the air quality became so bad because of fires in the city’s eastern hills that residents were advised to stay home where possible and use face masks when outdoors as military helicopters dumped buckets of water over the blazes. Much-awaited downpours on Wednesday and Thursday finally helped tame the fires.
Colombia’s weather agency said among the areas where records were broken was the town of Jerusalén, which reached 40.4C on January 23. In the town of Honda, local authorities said temperatures soared to 44C. At the higher altitudes of Villahermosa, a town near the snow-capped Nevado del Ruiz volcano, the mercury hit 25C.
In Argentina, a fire in Patagonia has destroyed thousands of hectares of the Los Alerces national park and left firefighters battling to keep it away from two nearby towns.
Temperatures in the region — normally cold and windy — reached 40C in January. The governor of Chubut province blamed arson by indigenous Mapuche groups — an accusation Mapuche leaders said was “dangerous nonsense”.
The fires came as Argentine legislators debate a reform bill that includes weakening of protections for glaciers.
Grantham Institute’s Barnes said El Niño had exacerbated drought conditions, with lower rainfall than usual, but rising temperatures caused by climate change were the bigger factor.
The World Weather Attribution scientific analysis group, which Barnes was involved in, has found a historic drought that left large areas of the Amazon rainforest parched for much of last year was caused primarily by climate change.
The El Niño phenomenon that warms the Pacific Ocean — historically a driver of drought — had a “much smaller influence”, the scientists said in the recent report.
Barnes said a key issue was how warmer temperatures affect the evaporation of water into the atmosphere or through transpiration from plants and soils, known as evapotranspiration.
With temperatures rising because of global warming, Barnes said historical levels of precipitation may no longer be enough to counteract the level of moisture being lost to evapotranspiration, leaving countries at risk of struggling to achieve a normal water balance.
Additional reporting by Ciara Nugent in Buenos Aires
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