Thousands of fires are burning in the drought-wracked Amazon

Much of Brazil is burning as tens of thousands of fires rage around the country, half of them in the Amazon rainforest. Exacerbated by a severe drought, the fires threaten one of the world’s most crucial ecosystems and are consuming the Amazon’s vast stores of carbon, sending more of the damaging greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

2.4 million hectares (about 6 million acres) of forests, fields and pastures in the Amazon burned between June and August. There were more than 95,000 hot spots in the Amazon biome this year to Sept. 18, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, known as Inpe.

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