Climate Crisis 'Turned 2023 Drought In Amazon Into Catastrophe'

The climate crisis turned the drought that struck the Amazon rainforest in 2023 into a devastating event, a study has found.

- Damian Carrington

The drought was the worst ever recorded in many places and hit the maximum "exceptional" level on the scientific scale. Without planetwarming emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal, it would have been far less extreme, the analysis found.

The study also showed the drought was made 30 times more likely to happen because of the global heating.

The return of the natural El Niño climate phenomenon is associated with drier conditions but that only played a small role, the scientists said.

The climate crisis is supercharging extreme weather across the planet, but the extreme Amazon drought is a stark, worrying example as the rainforest is already thought to be close to a tipping point into a drier state.

That would lead to a mass die-off of trees in the world's most important store of carbon on land,driving temperatures still higher.

Millions of people in the Amazon have been affected, with some rivers at their lowest for more than a century. There have been drinking water shortages, failed crops and power cuts as hydroelectric plants dried up.

The drought also worsened wildfires, and high water temperatures were linked to a mass mortality of river life, including the deaths of more than 150 endangered pink river dolphins in a single week.