Last weekend, Brazil experienced its ninth heat wave of the year, with 15 countries on alert due to the high temperatures. It's the final blows of a year that's on track to be the hottest in history. According to the National Institute of Meteorology, all average temperature records have been broken in Brazil month after month since July. The residents of Irajá, in the northern part of Rio de Janeiro, know this only too well. In recent years, the neighborhood has gained a reputation for being the hippest in the city. Here, 30 kilometers from the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana, the sea breeze is not even noticeable and the trees on the streets are few. Nothing to do with the lush tropical city of the tourist postcard. On one corner, Giselle Silva sells sardines in crates filled with ice. Every day he slathers himself with level 80 sunscreen to work under an umbrella. Despite the shadow, she always gets burned. “The most stressful thing about it is the heat, it’s unbearable. Things have gotten much worse in recent years. And I'll tell you this: This is the preview of hell. “This summer is going to be terrible,” she says resignedly.
The residents of Irajá know well that the scorching sun is not an isolated incident: “For me, the deforestation of the Amazon is the main reason,” says Waldir Cavalcante, a taxi driver, sitting on a plastic chair next to the door. from a supermarket to feel the freshness of the air conditioning. His taxi spends the day on the opposite sidewalk in full sun. It doesn't get a bit of shade until four in the afternoon, says its owner, who remembers a childhood in a completely different neighborhood; with unpaved roads and many more trees. Now Irajá is a sea of asphalt.
A man carries a container of water along a riverbed in the Amazon on Oct. 26. BRUNO KELLY (Portal)
Heat waves, the extreme drought that has dried up the rivers of the Amazon or the floods in the south of the country are extreme climatic events that have multiplied this year due to El Niño. This phenomenon naturally warms the environment, but is becoming more pronounced due to climate change, experts warn. For the director of the Institute for Climate and Society (iCS), María Netto, the increase in the frequency and intensity of environmental disasters is a given, but not only that. “There are effects that are not so noticeable, that increase little by little, such as the rise in temperature or the variation in rainfall frequency, which have enormous impacts on agriculture and the quality of life of people, and these impacts are particularly important. “They affect the most vulnerable,” he recalls in a telephone conversation.
In November, in the middle of southern spring, Brazil recorded the highest temperatures in its history. Due to the high humidity, thermal temperatures of 59.7 degrees were recorded in Rio at eight in the morning. At a concert that singer Taylor Swift was giving in the city, a 23-year-old girl, Ana Clara Benevides, died of cardiac arrest. The heat in the stadium was unbearable and access to drinking water was almost impossible. The government responded by hastily passing a decree forcing event organizers to offer free water on days with high temperatures. The pop star's second concert was postponed by a day because the heat wouldn't let up.
Taylor Swift fans wait to enter the Nilton Santos Olympic Stadium in Rio on November 18th. Silvia Izquierdo (AP)
Until recently, canceling a concert because of the heat sounded like science fiction to Cariocas, who are used to living with “a sun for everyone,” as they often joke, but lately the limits are being pushed. For the first time, the city council itself has included the temperature sensation as one of the indicators that show the alert level in the city, for example when heavy rain is forecast and residents are asked not to go outdoors. .
Because of widespread suffocation, sales of air conditioners in Brazil have jumped 38% and prices have jumped 14%, the sharpest increase since 1994, the industry said. The price increase is not only explained by increasing demand; It has to do with what is happening many kilometers north, in the heart of the Amazon, where the worst drought in 121 years has drastically reduced river flows. All air conditioning units manufactured in Brazil leave the free zone of Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas. This industrial center is only connected to the rest of the country by boat and sailing is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive. Far worse than the manufacturing companies are the indigenous people and riverside communities whose livelihoods depend on the river. Although rains in recent weeks began to ease the situation, at the height of the drought, 62 communities were on alert and 600,000 people needed humanitarian assistance to eat, take medicine or even access drinking water. The fires in the jungle once again plunged Manaus into an unbreathable cloud of smoke. The fire was particularly severe in another valuable biome, the Pantanal, a wetland that burned like never before because the rains took longer to arrive than in other years.
While in the Amazon region the inhabitants of the region with the largest freshwater reserves rely on bottled water, in the far south there is a problem of abundance. Since September, persistent storms have left a trail of destruction: at least 55 dead and thousands displaced. The Iguazu Falls reached their highest water level in nine years and the passage had to be closed to visitors. Even São Paulo, the country's proud economic engine, was not spared. There was a historic power outage in November. A storm with wind gusts of more than 100 kilometers per hour killed seven people and toppled hundreds of trees, damaging power lines as they toppled. More than two million households were without power for days.
A firefighter fights the fire on the Transpantaneira highway that crosses the Pantanal on November 15.Andre Penner (AP)
On the threshold of summer, in addition to the heat, there is now also the fear of violent storms, which lead to landslides and the resulting fatalities every year. Another cause for concern is the small and inconvenient Aedes Aegypti, the mosquito that transmits dengue, Zika and chikungunya. This year, dengue cases increased by 15.8% compared to 2022, reaching 1.6 million. The Ministry of Health attributes this to the effects of this El Niño, increased by climate change, which causes above-average rain and heat, as well as the spread of dengue fever type 3, which has not been recorded in Brazil for 15 years. An explosion in cases is expected this summer. With the gradual increase in temperatures in recent years, this typical tropical disease has spread to latitudes where it is not so common, for example in the southern states with a more temperate climate.
For Netto, the frequency and intensity of environmental tragedies could mark a before and after, particularly in terms of street-level awareness. Climate change is present in neighborhood conversations, on the bus line, in the bakery. This awareness must be translated into action, and this is no longer just about reducing CO2 emissions, but rather about mitigating damage, because what we are experiencing and what is to come is already inevitable. “I think that the need for an adaptation agenda is not sufficiently urgent because we have already done everything wrong and now we have to correct it,” warns the expert.
Alligators on the banks of the almost dry Bento Gomez River, during the fires and heat waves in the Pantanal, on November 15th. Andre Penner (AP)
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