During the first nine months of 2024, 22.38 million hectares of land in Brazil were ravaged by fires, a new report published on Friday showed.
It is about 2.6% of Brazil's landmass, roughly comparable to the size of Belarus.
The MapBiomas initiative report was compiled by universities, NGOs, and tech companies by analyzing satellite images and other data.
Amazon hit the hardest
"The dry season in the Amazon, which usually runs from June to October, has been particularly severe this year, further aggravating the fire crisis in the region — a reflection of the intensification of climate change, which ends up playing a crucial role in the spread of fires," Ane Alencar, IPAM's Science Director and coordinator of MapBiomas Fogo said.
More than 50% of the burned area was in the Amazon rainforest, also known as the "lungs of the planet."
About 5.5 million hectares were burned in September this year alone, a rise of 196% from the same month last year.
The Cerrado water reservoir, which is home to approximately 5% of the planet's flora and fauna, experienced fires affecting 4.3 million hectares of land in September. This was a rise of 158% from last year.
The Pantanal, the world's largest wetland, experienced a 662% increase in fires compared to last September.
Climate change is not the only culprit
In the Amazon and Cerrado, wildfires are often the final stage of deforestation, used to "clear" devastated areas, according to WWF Brazil. However, most fires in the past two months occurred in primary forests, not recently deforested areas.
"The combination of climate change caused by global warming with environmental degradation has created a favorable scenario for the criminal use of fire for a forest conversion that will probably be detected in future mappings of the devastated area in the Brazilian Amazon," WWF Brazil's Mariana Napolitano said.
Brazil has seen the worst fires in 14 years since the beginning of the year according to the National Institute for Space Research.
