June wildfires are biggest in 16 years

Data from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) indicate that June was the month with the highest number of fire outbreaks in the Amazon and in the Cerrado, in the last 16 years.

In the Amazon Forest, 3,075 fires were registered last month. The number is only surpassed by the 2007 record, when 3,519 outbreaks were accounted for. In June last year, Inpe registered 2,562 fires, which represents an increase of 37% between June 2022 and June 2023.

In the Cerrado, in 2022, the month of June registered 4,239 fires. In the same month of 2023, there were 4,472 occurrences, an increase of 5%. As in the Amazon biome, in the Cerrado the highest numbers of fires were also recorded in 2007, when there were 7051 fires.

The data are considered high for the month of June, as the average number of outbreaks in the Cerrado is 3,779 and in the Amazon, 2,682.

Historically, the months of July, August and September are the months with the highest records of fire outbreaks in both biomes. Inpe data indicate that in the months of July to September, the Cerrado records, on average, between 12,000 and 22,000 outbreaks, while in the Amazon, the average can vary between 16,000 and 32,000.

In the Amazon, fires were more frequent than in 2022

Inpe data also show that the first half of 2023 recorded more fires than the same period last year. While in the first six months of 2022 there were 7,533 fires in the Brazilian Amazon, satellites recorded 8,344 in the biome between January and June 2023 – an increase of 10%.

In the Cerrado, the accumulated for the first half of 2023 showed a reduction in fire outbreaks when compared to the same period in 2022: from 10,869 to 10,322, a decrease of 5%.