No último mês, a Amazônia Ocidental passou a ser a região mais poluída do mundo,
segundo a plataforma suíça de monitoramento do ar, IQAir. Os incêndios
florestais intensificam a emissão de poluentes e a média de concentração
de material particulado colocou a região à frente de países como Índia,
Paquistão e China — que historicamente enfrentam problemas com a
qualidade do ar.
Os meses de setembro e outubro tradicionalmente registram picos na
poluição do ar na maioria das cidades do Brasil devido aos incêndios na
Amazônia. Entretanto, os dados enviados a pedido da CNN mostram que, neste ano, cidades têm registrado índices de poluição acima da média para o mês de agosto.
Em Rondônia, a capital Porto Velho (RO) teve o mês de agosto deste ano quatro vezes mais poluído do que no ano passado. O ar do município foi classificado como “perigoso”, grau mais alto de poluição, por sete dias.
Nesta quinta-feira (05), a cidade está na faixa “muito insalubre”, com níveis de poluentes quase 36 vezes maiores do que o recomendado pela Organização Mundial da Saúde (OMS), de 5 µg/m3 (microgramas por metro cúbico).
O corredor de fumaça dos incêndios florestais leva a nuvem de poluição a centenas de quilômetros de distância do foco das queimadas. A cidade de São Paulo registrou um mês mais poluído para a média, assim como o Rio de Janeiro, que teve o ar duas vezes pior do que no ano passado.
No Acre, Rio Branco (AC), também registrou índices duas vezes piores do que em comparação com agosto do ano passado. O município era a capital mais poluída do Brasil nesta quarta-feira (4), com níveis mais de 26 vezes acima do recomendado.
A IQAir prevê que Porto Velho (RO), siga com o ar de “Insalubre” a “Muito Insalubre” nas próxima semana. O calor e a baixa umidade do ar agravam os efeitos da poluição atmosférica.
Chamas destruíram enormes plantações de cana- de-açúcar em São Paulo
Martin Kuebler
4 de setembro de 2024
Enquanto
país enfrenta a pior seca da história, fogo se alastra por diversos
biomas, da Amazônia ao Pantanal. Fumaça encobre diversas cidades.
O Brasil já registrou em 2024 o maior número de incêndios florestais
dos últimos 14 anos. O fogo devastou áreas de vários biomas do país,
incluindo Amazônia, Pantanal e Cerrado. A fumaça se espalhou pelo país encobrindo várias cidades em diferentes regiões.
Somente em São Paulo, mais de 59 mil hectares foram queimados em
regiões de plantio de cana-de-açúcar. A Polícia Federal investiga
suspeitas de incêndios criminosos iniciados em locais diferentes que se
espalharam rapidamente através da vegetação extremamente seca, numa
região onde não chove há semanas. As autoridades reportaram que as
temperaturas altas, juntamente com os ventos fortes e a baixa umidade,
se tornaram uma combinação explosiva.
Não somente em São Paulo, o fogo encontra um cenário propício para se
alastrar. O país enfrenta ainda a maior seca da história, segundo o
Centro Nacional de Monitoramento de Desastres Naturais (Cemaden). Dados
do World Weather Attribution (WWA), um grupo de cientistas de diferentes
países que investiga os efeitos das mudanças climáticas sobre o clima
extremo, indicam que o mês de junho no Brasil foi o mais seco, quente e
ventoso desde o início dos registros, em 1979.
Em agosto, os estados que mais registraram focos de incêndio foram o
Mato Grosso (mais de 10,4 mil), Pará (9,6 mil), Amazonas (7,7 mil), Mato
Grosso do Sul (4,2mil) e São Paulo (3,4 mil). A Amazônia e o Pantanal
foram os biomas mais afetados.
Um relatório divulgado no início de agosto pelo WWA afirma que os
incêndios no Pantanal estão 40% mais intensos devido às mudanças
climáticas. Os dados corroboram essa análise, uma vez que as
precipitações médias anuais vêm diminuindo de maneira contínua no bioma
há mais de 40 anos.
"Essas 'megassecas' se tornam cada vem mais frequentes e graves",
afirma Carlos Peres, especialista em ecologia e conservação da
Universidade East Anglia, no Reino Unido. Segundo o brasileiro, cerca de
três quintos do país estão ficam mais secos.
Floresta secando
Em junho, um estudo
da organização não-governamental MapBiomas, uma rede que envolve
universidades, ONGs e empresas de tecnologia e que realiza estudos para
monitorar mudanças na cobertura e no uso da terra, revelou que a
Amazônia e o Pantanal estão ameaçados por essa perda de água.
A Amazônia, por exemplo, iniciou 2023 com superfície de água acima da
média histórica e, meses depois, o bioma enfrentou uma seca sem
precedentes. O rio Negro registrou o menor índice desde que seu nível
começou a ser acompanhado, há 100 anos.
Proporcionalmente, o Pantanal foi o bioma que mais secou desde 1985.
Em 2023, a superfície de água anual registrada ficou em 3.820 km², o que
representou uma redução de 61% em relação à média histórica. Além da
diminuição da área alagada, o tempo em que este terreno fica submerso
também caiu.
Filho de pecuarista, Peres cresceu nos anos 1960 e 1970 no Pará.
Durante sua vida, ele viu a Amazônia encolher em 20%. Parte do que
restou da floresta acaba sendo cada vez mais atingida pelas queimadas.
"Há 25 anos, as florestas na Amazônia, mesmo se estivessem em solos
arenosos ou em áreas atingidas por secas sazonais, não queimavam a não
ser que houvesse algum tipo de perturbação humana, como a extração de
madeira", diz Peres. "Mas, isso mudou."
O especialista afirma que as secas consecutivas e as estações de
chuvas mais curtas não proporcionam aos solos tempo suficiente para se
reabastecerem de água, o que torna a vegetação mais vulnerável aos
incêndios.
Luciana Gatti, que lidera uma equipe de pesquisadores do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe), avalia que o problema está apenas piorando. "Estamos acelerando o colapso climático", afirmou à DW, sublinhando que o desmatamento
tem contribuído mais do que o aquecimento global para aumentar as
temperaturas na Amazônia. "A floresta que restou não é mais a mesma. É
como se a Amazônia estivesse doente."
A billboard shows the temperature in Phoenix, Arizona, on 5 June 2024. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Hottest large city in US broke previous heat record from 1993 as temperatures are expected to reach 110 tomorrow
Phoenix, Arizona, saw its 100th straight day of 100F (37.7C) heat this week.
The hottest
large city in the United States broke its previous record of 76
consecutive 100F days set in 1993. The relentless streak, which started
on 27 May and hit its 100th day on Tuesday, is forecast to persist into next week. An excessive heat warning is in effect through Friday, with temperatures expected to reach 110F (43C) tomorrow.
This summer was the hottest
one in Phoenix since 1896, when records first began. Latest county data
shows that at least 177 people died from heat-related causes so far
this year, with 436 under investigation. Last year, Maricopa county saw 645 confirmed heat-related fatalities, enduring 55 days in a row with above 110F temperatures.
“Summers
in Phoenix are becoming increasingly hotter, with more intense and
prolonged heat,” said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at the non-profit
Climate Central. “On average, Phoenix now experiences about 60 days [or]
65% of the summer with extreme heat.”
In addition to Arizona, millions of Americans across Nevada and California are facing scorching heat, with the highest temperature expected to peak in the Death Valley national park at 120F (49C).
“Temperatures
will be running up to 8 degrees above normal for early September,” the
National Weather Service Las Vegas office warned in an advisory.
Homeless people, children, the elderly, pregnant people and those with chronic medical conditions are at higher risk for heat-related illness.
“Consecutive high heat days mean that people in
Phoenix don’t get respite at night, especially those who don’t have or
can’t afford to run an AC unit as well as those who work outdoors,” said
Juan Declet-Barreto, senior social scientist for climate vulnerability
at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“I would
like the public to understand that this heat is no longer a rare
occurrence,” Declet-Barreto said. “It will continue to get worse year
after year if we don’t make drastic emissions reductions. We need to
decarbonize our energy, industrial, agricultural and transportation
sectors. There’s no way around that if we want cities like Phoenix to be
livable.”
‘Nightmarish situation’: Buildings from the flooded village of Kallio have begun to re-emerge from the Mornos reservoir. Photograph: Yannis Kolesidis/EPA
Heatwaves and lack of rainfall have led to receding water levels in the Mornos reservoir, which submerged Kallio in the 1970s
No place is more indicative of plummeting rainfall levels in Greece
than the Mornos reservoir. And no settlement is more indicative of how
serious this year’s drought has been than Kallio, a village submerged by
the artificial lake in the late 1970s.
Nearly
five decades after Kallio was deliberately flooded as part of the
construction of a dam to ensure water supply for Athens, people living
nearby have watched in disbelief as reserves have receded to the point
that the village has reappeared.
“It’s
a nightmarish situation,” said Apostolos Gerodimos, the head of the
60-strong community forced to move upland when the dam was built about
125 miles west of Athens.
The outlines of stone buildings, including one
that housed the village’s school, have become visible as the water
level has dropped. Photograph: Alexandros Remoundos/EPA
“The more water levels fall, the more buildings
that were submerged back then are re-emerging. If it doesn’t rain this
winter the problem is going to get much worse.”
An
estimated 80 buildings, including Kallio’s Evangelistra church and
primary school, were “sacrificed” when the reservoir was created. People
who were compensated at the time moved to Athens and other urban
centres or uphill where they formed a new community.
Although
the contours of the church have not yet been revealed, the outlines of
the stone building that once housed the school can now be seen because
of falling water levels.
Kostas
Koutsoumbas, the village’s vice-mayor, thinks water levels “have fallen
40 metres” this year and are still heading south. “We haven’t seen
anything like it since 1993,” he said. “It’ll be more acute than even
then if things don’t improve.”
An estimated 80 buildings were ‘sacrificed’ when the reservoir was created in the late 1970s. Photograph: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images
On the frontline of the climate emergency, Greece
has been hammered by a succession of heatwaves exacerbated by years of
erratic rain. The mercury hit record levels in June, July and August.
As
a result, across the Mediterranean country water shortages have become a
major concern. Popular islands, many of which rely on wells and
desalination plants, are especially affected at a time when unprecedented tourist arrivals are placing ever-greater pressure on climate-stressed resources.
In
early July, before blistering temperatures became a daily occurrence,
the water utility company, Eydap, estimated that water levels were down
30% in the Mornos reservoir compared with the same period last year.
With
prolonged drought focusing minds, Eydap officials have said they are
drawing up plans for better water management, with investments lined up
to the tune of €750m (£631m).
A dried out area of the Mornos reservoir. The
water utility company Eydap estimated water levels were down 30%
compared with last year. Photograph: Yannis Kolesidis/EPA
There are plans to tap Lake Yliki, about 52 miles
(85km) north-west of Athens, in addition to the artificial lake fed by
the Mornos and Evinos rivers.
Eydap has
increasingly urged people in the Attica region surrounding Athens – the
country’s biggest concentration of people, with 3.7 million inhabitants –
not to waste water.
The Greek prime minister,
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has said it is clear the country will also need to
build more dams. “We don’t have the luxury to waste water,” he said
this summer.
“At a time when we know with
certainty we will have less water, we must protect water resources more
methodically than we have done so far.”
Crowds on Sydney's
Bondi beach beat the heat on the last day of winter 2024. BoM data
showed average temperatures across Australia in August were 3.03C above
the long-term average. Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
The 2024 winter was the second hottest on record since weather data collection began in 1910
Australia recorded its hottest August on record,
with the national temperature 3C above average, as September kicked off
with total fire bans in parts of New South Wales on Monday.
Bureau
of Meteorology data showed average temperatures across the nation in
August were 3.03C above the long-term average, easily beating the
previous 2.56C record set in 2009.
The
2024 winter also ranked as the second hottest on record going back to
1910, the data showed, coming in at 1.48C above average. The hottest
winter on record was 2023 at 1.54C above average.
On Monday, the NSW Rural Fire Service issued total fire bans for greater Sydney and the Illawarra and Shoalhaven region.
Dr
Simon Grainger, a senior climatologist at the bureau, said: “When we
get these significant heat events, they can break records by quite a
large margin.”
He said ocean temperatures
around the continent had been very high in July and this had “set the
groundwork” for the warmer conditions.
Western
Australia, South Australia and Queensland all set record winter high
temperatures during the second half of August. Large parts of the
country saw daily and nighttime temperatures more than 10C above
average.
The hottest winter temperature on
record for the country, 41.6C, was set on 26 August at Yampi Sound in
the remote Kimberley area.
In NSW on Monday, the fire danger rating was high for greater Sydney and extreme for the Illawarra area.
The NSW RFS inspector, Ben Shepherd, said it was not unusual to have elevated fire risk around this time of year.
“This is showing that while we did have wet
weather initially, it quickly swung the other way to being very dry and
warm. But it is the wind that is driving the fire danger up.”
There should be a return to moderate fire risk for the rest of the week, he said.
He
said the past three years were relatively benign for fire weather, but
the weather bureau forecasts were showing warmer than average conditions
were likely for the next three months.
“That means now is the time to set up and get your property prepared and have your fire plans in place,” he said.
Later
this week the Australasian Fire And Emergency Services Authorities
Council is expected to release an outlook on the risk of bushfires
around the country for spring.
A
Fervo Energy geothermal site near Milford, Utah, last year. Meta has
announced a similar project with a Sage Geosystems in Texas.Credit...Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times
As electricity demand from data centers soars, Meta and Google are
looking at a novel solution: harnessing clean heat far below Earth’s
surface.
Big tech companies across the United States are struggling to find enough clean energy to power all the data centers they plan to build.
Now,
some firms are betting on a novel solution: harvesting the heat deep
beneath the Earth’s surface to create emissions-free electricity, using
drilling techniques from the oil and gas fracking boom.
On Monday, Meta, the company that owns Facebook, announced an agreement with a start-up called Sage Geosystems
to develop up to 150 megawatts of an advanced type of geothermal energy
that would help power the tech giant’s expanding array of data centers.
That is roughly enough electricity to power 70,000 homes.
Sage
will use fracking techniques similar to those that have helped extract
vast amounts of oil and gas from shale rock. But rather than drill for
fossil fuels, Sage plans to create fractures thousands of feet beneath
the surface and pump water into them. The heat and pressure underground
should heat the water to the point where it can be used to generate
electricity in a turbine, all without the greenhouse gases that are
causing global warming.
“It’s basically
the same fracking technology,” said Cindy Taff, an oil industry veteran
who worked at Shell for 36 years before becoming Sage’s chief executive.
“The difference is that we’re going after clean heat instead of
hydrocarbons” such as oil and gas.
Sage has already drilled a test well
in South Texas to demonstrate its approach. The startup now aims to
build its first large-scale power plant at a yet-to-be-determined
location east of the Rocky Mountains, with the first phase coming online
by 2027.
The deal is the latest sign of growing excitement for new types of geothermal power
that could provide enormous amounts of emissions-free electricity
around the clock and complement more variable sources like wind and
solar power.
Google has partnered with Fervo Energy, a prominent geothermal start-up, to build a 5-megawatt pilot plant in Nevada that has already begun supplying power to the grid. The two companies recently reached a deal to supply much more geothermal power in the years ahead to Google’s data centers.
Tech firms are facing an urgent need for more electricity, as growing
interest in artificial intelligence has triggered a data center boom. By
one estimate, data centers could consume 9 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030, up from 4 percent today.
Data centers
typically need power 24 hours a day, which wind turbines and solar
panels alone can’t provide. At the same time, many technology companies
have promised to reduce their planet-warming emissions and face pressure
not to rely on fossil fuels like coal or gas. So they are exploring
technologies that can run around the clock, like nuclear power or
enhanced geothermal.
“We’re going to
need every tool in the arsenal,” said Michelle Solomon, a senior policy
analyst at Energy Innovation, a nonprofit organization. “In the near
term, enhanced geothermal might play a relatively small role, but I feel
very optimistic about where the technology is going.”
Geothermal
power has been around for decades. But traditionally, geothermal plants
were limited to places where companies could easily tap underground hot
water reservoirs close to the surface. Only a few locations have the
right geology for this, such as parts of California or Iceland, which is
why geothermal currently provides just 0.4 percent of America’s
electricity.
But everywhere on Earth contains enormous amounts of underground heat if one can drill down far enough, and dozens of startups are exploring techniques
to unlock that heat in new locations. Although it can be expensive to
drill thousands of feet deep into hot, dry rock, those costs are falling
as companies gain experience. In February, Fervo said it had already reduced drilling times by up to 70 percent in just one year.
“We’re
already way ahead of where people expected us to be, and we’re
expecting more dramatic cost reductions in the future,” said Tim
Latimer, Fervo’s chief executive.
The
Energy Department estimates that geothermal could provide 90,000
megawatts of U.S. electric capacity by 2050 if technologies keep
improving, a twentyfold increase from today.
“Geothermal has such enormous potential,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in March.
Still,
next-generation geothermal gets significantly less federal funding than
other technologies like hydrogen fuels or nuclear power, in part
because it has only recently emerged as a promising energy source. That
means support from climate-conscious tech companies could be crucial as
geothermal start-ups navigate the risks of getting early projects built.
Urvi
Parekh, head of renewable energy at Meta, said the company wanted to
signal ahead of time that it intended to buy electricity from Sage so
that the start-up could raise funding and begin lining up equipment.
“There’s a tremendous value to us making that commitment today,” Ms.
Parekh said. “That way they can take the steps necessary to get that
project that we want to see on the electricity grids.”
Segundo Agostinho, a situação atual dos focos de incêndio está sob
controle em algumas regiões, mas o cenário pode se agravar nos próximos
dias.
De acordo com o dirigente, a maior concentração de focos de
calor atualmente se encontra na área conhecida como Arco do
Desmatamento, que abrange o sul da Amazônia.
Ele também mencionou a presença de focos na região do Cerrado, especialmente no Mato Grosso.
Previsão meteorológica e seus impactos
Agostinho
revelou que as informações meteorológicas indicam que a massa de ar
frio que atingiu o Sul do país está perdendo força. Consequentemente, é
esperada uma nova onda de calor nos próximos dias.
Esta mudança climática pode ter efeitos contraditórios: a melhora na
qualidade do ar das cidades afetadas pela fumaça com a subida do ar
quente; o aumento do risco de incêndios florestais.
Medidas preventivas e de combate
O Ibama está monitorando de
perto a situação meteorológica para orientar suas ações. Agostinho
informou que a instituição conta com um número significativo de recursos
para combater possíveis incêndios:
“Estamos com um número muito
grande de aeronaves, embarcações, brigadistas e estamos trabalhando em
articulação, principalmente com os governos estaduais”, afirmou o
presidente do Ibama.
A situação requer atenção contínua e ação
coordenada entre as diferentes esferas governamentais para prevenir e
combater os incêndios florestais que possam surgir com a chegada da nova
onda de calor.
Os textos gerados por inteligência artificial na CNN Brasil são
feitos com base nos cortes de vídeos dos jornais de sua programação.
Todas as informações são apuradas e checadas por jornalistas. O texto
final também passa pela revisão da equipe de jornalismo da CNN
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