The planet’s largest reservoir of fresh water is in trouble.
The Amazon rainforest, where a fifth of the world’s fresh water flows, is suffering from a severe drought that shows no signs of ending.
The drought, likely made worse by global warming and deforestation, has led to large wildfires that have made the air dangerous for millions of people, including indigenous communities, while drying up major rivers at record rates.
A major river reached its lowest level ever recorded on Monday, while others are near record highs, choking endangered pink dolphins, shutting down a major hydroelectric plant and isolating tens of thousands in remote communities who can only travel by boat.
“Where the river used to be is now just dirt,” said Ruth Martins, 50, a leader of Boca do Mamirauá, a small river community in the Amazon. “We have never experienced such a drought before.”
The drier conditions are accelerating the destruction of the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest, parts of which have begun to transform from moist ecosystems that store large amounts of heat-trapping gases to drier ecosystems that release the gases into the atmosphere. The result is a double blow to the global fight to combat climate change and biodiversity loss.
“This is a catastrophe with lasting consequences,” said Luciana Vanni Gatti, a scientist at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research who documents changes in the Amazon. “The more forest is lost, the less resilient it is.”
Recent studies have shown that climate change, deforestation and fires have made it harder for the Amazon to recover from severe droughts.
And, Ms. Gatti warned, the worst could be yet to come. The rainy season is expected to begin in the next few weeks, and if the drought that began in June continues, it would be the first time such extreme conditions have prevailed in the Amazon’s driest period and continued into its wettest period .
In Tefé, a rural community in the northwest of the Amazon, residents cross muddy stretches of lake bottom on motorcycles and paddle canoes down narrow streams that were once rivers. About 158 riverside villages in the same region were left behind as waterways connecting them to larger cities dried up, said Edivilson Braga, coordinator of the local Civil Defense Service.
“They are completely cut off,” he said, adding that authorities had so far delivered thousands of baskets of essential food, many by helicopter, to thousands of families.
The Amazon has experienced droughts in the past, but now it is facing “simultaneous disasters,” said Ayan Santos Fleischmann, a hydrologist at the Mamirauá Institute, a research organization based in Tefé. Scarce rainfall, scorching heat and boiling water temperatures are simultaneously affecting the region.
“This is a crisis – a humanitarian, environmental and health crisis,” said Dr. Fleischmann. “And what scares us most is what lies ahead.”
In Boca do Mamirauá, about two hours by speedboat from Tefé, drying waterways have caused supplies of basic food and medicine to dwindle and prevented children from taking the river route to school since September 20, Ms. said Martins, the community leader.
Across the Amazon, wells and streams have dried up, leaving communities without clean drinking water. “The water turned into mud here,” said Tuniel Gomes Figueiredo, who lives in Murutinga, an indigenous village of about 3,000 people.
With no alternative, some residents drink, cook and bathe with contaminated water. “This water makes children sick, it makes older people sick,” Mr. Braga said. Health authorities also worry that stagnant puddles of superheated water could breed mosquitoes that transmit malaria and dengue fever.
The drought has put pressure on countless animal species in a region known for its abundant wildlife. Water temperatures remain high in Lake Tefé and more pink river dolphin carcasses have turned up in the last week, bringing the death toll to 153 since the first carcasses were recovered on September 23, Dr. Fleischmann.
A toxic algae bloom, likely linked to the drought and extreme heat, has also spread in the lake, leaving a red stain in the water, although scientists aren’t sure whether it could harm people or animals. “We are trying to use nets to keep the dolphins out of this area,” said Dr. Fleischmann.
While low humidity and high heat alone can kill some plants and animals, much of the destruction is caused by the drier forest’s increased vulnerability to fires, typically started by farmers and others clearing the land. Since the start of the year, wildfires have devastated more than 18,000 square miles of the Amazon, an area twice the size of Vermont.
Smoke from wildfires has made the air in Manaus, a city of two million people in the heart of the Amazon, so dangerous that it recently became one of the most polluted cities in the world, according to the World Air Quality Index project. Doctors in Manaus say checking morning air quality data has become an anxious habit in the city as children and the elderly end up in hospitals with shortness of breath.
Camila Justa, a veterinarian in Manaus, said she had never seen such heavy smoke covering the sky and suffered an asthma attack for the first time in 20 years, while her four-year-old son suffered from pneumonia twice since September.
“It’s really hard to fill your lungs with air,” she said. “And when you do that, it burns.”
The drought has parched lands across the Amazon. In Bolivia, dozens of communities have dwindling water supplies, crops have shrunk and lagoons have dried up, “with major consequences for biodiversity,” said Marlene Quintanilla, research director at the Friends of Nature Foundation, a nonprofit group.
The lack of rain in the Amazon is largely due to two climate patterns, experts said.
El Niño is increasing from the west, warming the waters in the Pacific near the equator. From the southwest, high temperatures in the waters of the North Atlantic have accelerated the flow of air towards the Amazon and prevented the formation of rain clouds over the forest.
While the connection between human-caused global warming and drought is still unclear, climate models suggest that “these events will become more common in the next few decades as temperatures rise caused by climate change,” said Gilvan Sampaio, a monitoring scientist Climate patterns at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research.
The effects of climate change are compounded by severe deforestation in the Amazon, as farmers clear land for soy and cattle farms, whose products are exported to countries around the world. Cutting down trees, similar to global warming, leads to less frequent rain and higher temperatures as the trees in the Amazon release moisture, cooling temperatures and forming rain clouds.
Drying rivers are also a blow to the region’s economy. Barges carrying corn to China and other countries had to reduce their loads by half along a key river this month because the water was too shallow and erosion of a riverbed led to the collapse of a port.
The Amazon’s rivers also fuel power plants that produce over a tenth of Brazil’s electricity, and the lack of rain led to the closure of one plant.
Similar drought conditions were documented in 2015, contributing to the Amazon’s worst wildfire season on record. But scientists expect this drought to be even more devastating because the Atlantic Ocean is warmer and El Niño has not yet reached its peak.
“This is just the beginning,” said Dr. Gatti, the scientist.
On a recent afternoon, heavy clouds darkened the sky over the riverside village of Boca do Mamirauá. People ran for buckets to fill with rainwater. But the ominous clouds quickly disappeared. “Not a single drop,” said Ms. Martins, the community leader.
“We just pray it will rain.”