Experts names main reason for record drought in the Amazon

By Alimat Aliyeva

The record drought in the Brazilian Amazon in 2023 was caused by climate change, Azernews reports, citing foreign media outlets.

This conclusion was reached by an international team of scientists from the Center for the Study of Weather Phenomena World Weather Attribution (WWA).

"The main cause of the record drought in 2023 in the Amazonian region of Brazil was climate change caused by human activity," says the report posted on the organization's website.

According to scientists, the influence of the El Nino phenomenon on the weather in the Amazon basin turned out to be much weaker than experts had expected.

"Climate change leads to an increase in temperature and a decrease in precipitation. These factors increased the probability of an unprecedented drought in 2023 by 30 times compared to a situation in which the only factor influencing the weather would be El Nino," the authors of the study note.

Meteorologists from Brazil, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States worked on the WWA report. They compared modern climate observation data with information obtained in the pre-industrial era.
The Brazilian Amazon has been experiencing an unprecedented drought since March 2023. The amount of precipitation in the region is significantly less than normal, rivers have shallowed to record low levels, and forest fires have become more frequent against the background of constantly high temperatures. Abnormally high warming of the water in the Amazon basin has led to the mass death of fish and animals inhabiting the region.