The Amazon Is Suffering From Wildfires More Than Ever Now

(Photo : P.Brando/PNAS)

The Amazon might experience more fires this year due to El Niño, warn scientists from the United States.

El Niño of 2015 has extended into 2016, thus causing rainfall patterns to change in various parts of the world. Of those places affected, the Amazon has been the most significant one. The South American rainforest has seen a decrease in rainfall, and it is expected to reach its driest point since 2002, noted NASA.

The result will be more agriculture fires. Since the Amazon is not adapted to fire, the fires will be worse there than other forests.

"When trees have less moisture to draw upon at the beginning of the dry season, they become more vulnerable to fire, and evaporate less water into the atmosphere," said scientist Jim Randerson, University of California Irvine. "This puts millions of trees under stress and lowers humidity across the region, allowing fires to grow bigger than they normally would."

Although the Amazon experienced wildfires in 2005 and 2010, when the region suffered from extended forest fires as a result of drought, Doug Morton, an expert on Earth science from NASA, said that this new phenomenon would be more dangerous than those previous two events.

Researchers found nine other places outside of the Amazon that may suffer from wildfires as well. Noted below, fire risk in those areas will be four times more predictable three to six months prior to a wildfire.

"Fire forecasts three to six months before peak fire activity are important to identify areas with higher fire probability for integrated planning in support of local actions," said Liana Anderson, a scientist at the National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters.

Researchers also discovered that the Amazon has experienced more wildfires than now than any period in history, and the information correlates to the forecast on the region's wildfire intensity.