Amazon fires worst in 10 years
Brasilia, Sept. 3: The official August data on the number of fires in Brazil's Amazon needs to be corrected and will likely show an increase over last year, meaning that blazes surged to a decade high, a scientist responsible for the figures told Reuters on Wednesday.
Brazilian media has reported that fires in Brazil's section of the Amazon rainforest fell by 5% in August, citing data currently on the website of government space research agency Inpe that has not been corrected.
Alberto Setzer, a senior scientist at Inpe who is involved in producing the official fire data, said that the reporting of finalized data had been delayed by an error with a NASA satellite.
But once that issue is corrected, it will likely show that fires increased by between 1% and 2% in August 2020 compared to the same month a year ago, Setzer said. That would mean it is the worst
spate of fires for the month since August 2010.
"It's going to be up. The number of fires, fire pixels, will increase. Maybe up to 1 or 2%, I would guess," Setzer said, referring to spots of heat registered on satellite images.
Inpe's press office directed a request for comment to Setzer, who gave more details on his calculations and cautioned that a shift of 1 to 2% is within the margin of error.
The science and technology ministry, which over
sees the space research agency, did not immediately respond to request for comment. The press office for President Jair Bolsonaro declined to comment, directing questions to the office of VP Hamilton Mourao.