We are told that Amazon fires are at record levels right now. This is a blatant lie. The only “record” is that Amazonian fires have DECREASED over the “record”.
This is what we are being told.
This (is) what the data actually looks like, to August 22. Yes, its updated daily.
This comes from a wonderful site, https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html#elbeni
It uses NASA MODIS data, from the Terra and Aqua satellites, and is updated daily. By going to the website, you can look at individual regions in the Amazon, or as I have done, look at the totals for the Amazon. This site also has global data, but I am only looking at the Amazon region here.
The Interactive Graphs are very informative. Hovering the cursor over the graph will show the data at that point.
You can highlight individual years, by clicking on a year in the legend at the bottom of the graph. That year remains bright, while the rest are dimmed. Using Eyeball Mark 1 Trend Indicator (EBM1TI), 2019 is slightly high, but not at record levels. Not even close.
One thing I saw by looking at each year, was a rough pattern – one or two bad years, one or two years at much lower levels, then a bad year. This pattern is there until 2010. 2010 was the last “bad year”. Levels since 2010 have been 1/2 or less of the “bad years”. The old pattern has been broken.
Not only does this site calculate number of fires, it also calculates carbon emissions (in Tg) from the fires. Note that the site issues a caveat about estimated later data, hence its grayed out.
This emissions chart from the website shows what I was talking about, in alternating bad/good years. But as I said, only until 2010. It is obvious there is a reducing trend in emissions, again using EBM1TI.
Again, by hovering the cursor over the bar chart, you can look at data points. Clicking on a legend at the bottom will highlight that series.
Is it significant? Dunno. I need to download and trend the data. I can say definitively, that there is no increasing trend, and 2019 is a LOONNGG way from record territory.
Note that the Annual Emissions would have to incorporate fire area, to get the total emissions. Just in case anyone would object that fire numbers are not fire area.
Conclusion: Amazonian fires, using very current NASA data, show a decline over the record, and are nowhere close to a record so far in 2019.
Postscript 1: As Willis often says, if you disagree with something I said, quote exactly what I said, and why it is wrong.
Postscript 2: This might be a good Reference Page. Have a “Fires” page, with the MODIS charts embedded. Charles, Anthony?
Postscript 3: The NY Times claims 2019 fires are way up, over 2018. That is correct. What they don’t say, is that about 1/2 the years BEFORE 2019 are higher, and about 1/2 are lower. Cherry picking of the first order.
Postscript 4: Nick Stokes points out that one province is at record levels of fires. True, its just under record levels today. But that means that the rest of the entire region must be UNDER average (2003-present). Looking at each region in the Amazon Basin, that is indeed true. Santa Cruz and Amazonas are above average, the rest are at or well below average. Result? The entire region is very nearly at the MODIS average for this time of year.
Let’s make it a global recession caused by climate change….
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-eu-beef/finland-urges-eu-to-consider-banning-brazilian-beef-over-amazon-fires-idUSKCN1VD17R?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29
Global warming is most certainly causing fires in the Amazon. The jungle is being burned to replace it with ethanol and bio-diesel crops.
Obviously more research is needed to get the truth from the warmers. Jumping to conclusions to make a point is not only lazy but dishonest.
We are also being told that “20% of the world’s oxygen is produced in the Amazon”, so we are all going to choke to death. Or are we?
My understanding is that the *living* rain forest absorbs CO2 and releases O2. But when those same plants die and decompose, all the carbon in them recombines with O2 as CO2 again. Unless there is somehow a huge mountain of un-decomposed carbon material forming under the Amazon, the rain forest must be roughly O2 neutral.
The satellite (forgot it’s name) that “sees” the CO2 sources on Earth, show a HUGE outpouring of the trace-gas over the Amazon area.
-Which is why it’s images don’t get advertised.
and they spent many millions on the satellite..
coulda just asked saint Greta where it was
or stick her in a tesla rocket and leave her up there to report?
“Unless there is somehow a huge mountain of un-decomposed carbon material forming under the Amazon”
There most definitely is not. In contrast to northern taiga where there are indeed huge amounts of undecomposed litter, in an amazonian rain forest virtually all organic materiel is in the living trees. There is little underbrush and the ground is bare laterite clay or sand (“arena blanca”). Leaf litter is very quickly consumed by invertebrates and bacteria.
It is a bit different in Southeast Asian rainforests where there is often fairly extensive peat deposits. It makes for bigger and more persistent forest fires.
“20% of the world’s oxygen is produced in the Amazon”
Completely irrelevant, since that is 20% of almost nothing. The atmosphere contains 20.95 % O2 and 0.04 % CO2. Land plants can only produce oxygen through photosynthesizing part of those 0.04 % and so are very limited in scope. Those 21 % have built up over >500 million years by organic carbon being sequestered in the ground as shales, coal, oil, gas, peat etc and can only decrease materially through that coal (or other buried un-oxidized elements) being oxidized, which would take at least as long as it took to build up, since most of it is buried miles deep.
Phytoplankton has a larger potential for O2 production since they can use the vastly greater amount of CO2 in the ocean for photosynthesis. They can also potentially draw down atmospheric O2 relatively fast (like in several million years) by dying and sinking to the ocean bottom and form black shale there. This has happened in the past. However this mechanism does not work in the prtesent icehouse climate as the the deep ocean is well oxygenated and all sinking organic material is immediately consumed by deep-sea organisms and turned back into CO2.
“Massive Fake News Campaign Targets Brazil’s Amazon Fires”
https://www.technocracy.news/massive-fake-news-campaign-targets-brazils-amazon-fires/?fbclid=IwAR2-NMTYsL7R6WjWAWrrmAa7kVG7jlnggoOcOgbxbU4DAmKH-hDYq3_XSJo
Reusing old pictures ?….dishonest media ? D’OH !
I realise number of fires vs land affected is an issue, but this latest scare for the first 8 months of the year is said to involve:
The forest fires have hit a record number this year, with 72,843 detected so far by the Brazilian Government’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-21/wildfires-raging-through-the-amazon-rainforest-at-record-rate/11434866
Setzer has it both ways re rainfall/drought:
(from WaPo) “This central Brazil and south of the Amazon Rainforest region has been undergoing a prolonged drought,” Alberto Setzer, a researcher at Inpe, said in an interview with local media outlets…
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/in-brazil-smoke-from-amazon-forest-fires-engulfs-sao-paulo-baffling-and-alarming-thousands
(from Reuters) There is nothing abnormal about the climate this year or the rainfall in the Amazon region, which is just a little below average,” said INPE researcher Alberto Setzer…
https://www.smh.com.au/world/south-america/as-the-amazon-burns-brazil-s-president-feels-the-heat-20190821-p52jbz.html
even so, how to explain these numbers for a single month in 217?
29 Sept 2017: Guardian: Brazil’s worst month ever for forest fires blamed on human activity
by Sam Cowie in Rio de Janeiro
The National Institute of Space Research (INPE) has detected 106,000 fires destroying natural vegetation so far this month – the highest number in a single month since records began in 1998, said Alberto Setzer, coordinator of INPE’s fire monitoring satellite program…
The total number of blazes since 1 January was 196,000, and Seltzer expressed concern that – with the dry season continuing in Brazil’s Amazon – 2017 could surpass the worst year on record, 2004, when there were 270,000 fires…
The government of president Michel Temer has been heavily criticised by environmentalists for making deep cuts to the country’s environmental budget…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/28/brazil-forest-fires-deforestation-september-record-amazon
surely some hype can be presumed, in time for the G7 meeting in France?
NASA MODIS data shows that fire the entire Amazon region are average over the record since 2003. 2019 has almost exactly 1/2 the other years ABOVE it, and the other 1/2 below it, in terms of numbers
The emissions are low, but it is early in the fire season. I do not expect a record in emissions, though, by year end.
ZeroHedge has weighed in with an article about the massive number of fires burning in Africa, far more, apparently, than Brazil. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-23/more-wildfires-are-burning-angola-congo-brazil
Almost as if there is a global issue with an increase in wildfires – perhaps due to a changing climate from human greenhouse emissions?
There is no global increase in fires.
Global area burned has been declining since 1900.
There has been a 24% drop in global fire burned since 1998.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-detects-drop-in-global-fires/
Fires in Africa and Madagascar are almost always deliberately set.
Typical cherrypicking by WUWT
If you go to the site mentioned in this article, and look at the Amazonia region rather than the El Benas region, the dial is at 93% and the graph has surpassed all the others for the past decade and a half
https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html#amazonas
Typical ignorance and cherry picking by yourself. I specifically stated in the post, that two regions were high, one at near records currently. The media headlines say “Amazon”, though, don’t they?
24 Aug: Accuweather: 5 things the media won’t tell you about the Amazon fires
By Jesse Ferrell
But there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and there is some good news: It may not be as bad as some in the media are reporting. This is serious stuff! We need to stick to the science. Here are five things that the media (which rarely gets it right on science) aren’t telling you…
The Amazon region isn’t even seeing above-normal fire activity this year.
Yes, there are a lot of fires in South America, some of them in the Amazon rain forests, but how unusual is that? Unfortunately, it’s not unusual at all. The map below shows little change, and on Aug. 15, NASA wrote (LINK):
“As of August 16, 2019, satellite observations indicated that total fire activity in the Amazon basin was slightly below average in comparison to the past 15 years.”
UPDATE: NASA changed the text from the quote above from “slightly below” to “close to the” without explanation. See bottom of blog…READ ON
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/five-things-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-the-amazon-fires/520290
Information from your sourced link was just updated: 2019 is, indeed, a record-breaking year in detected fires and fire intensity.
Doveryai, no proveryai. You need to prove this statement.
Why can’t a country develop itself? The eco tourism plan hasn’t worked, socialism has failed the citizens of South America, why cant these people develop thier economy as they see fit? You can bet once the Chinese or Russians get a foot in the door they will develop the wealth and exploit it. Just look at diamond and gold mining in Africa and how the Asians work that. Matto Grasso is a large area of grasslands, Teddy Roosevelt wrote about it more than 75yrs ago as the future of agriculture in Brazil. Let these people develop thier country as they see fit. Maybe that more than anything can help end the Exodus of people moving north to our border.
“Note that the Annual Emissions would have to incorporate fire area, to get the total emissions. Just in case anyone would object that fire numbers are not fire area.”
The graph for emissions states that it uses a linear relationship between counts and emissions. Doesn’t that imply that it specifically doesn’t incorporate fire area?
Aliança da Terra fields firefighters across the southeastern Amazon. This is certainly not a record year. For us, it is below normal. I have a video that I can send you to prove it. The data came from INPE.