Gepubliceerd op 16 oktober 2026
After months of drought linked to El Niño, fire activity is now rising sharply across the central and eastern Amazon. Satellite observations show widespread burning and smoke stretching from the forests around Manaus and Santarém towards the mouth of the Amazon River.
The pattern is part of a wider tropical fire cascade associated with El Niño. Following severe fires in equatorial Asia, unusually dry conditions have now left parts of the Amazon highly vulnerable, allowing escaped agricultural fires to spread into the rainforest.
Thick smoke from widespread fires drifts across the Amazon near Manaus and Santarém on 12 October 2026. Prolonged drought linked to El Niño has left large areas of rainforest unusually vulnerable to fire.
Image: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview
The impacts are already being felt far beyond the burning forest. In Manaus, heavy smoke pushed fine-particle concentrations to hazardous levels, forcing school closures and the cancellation of outdoor activities.
Satellites are also revealing how difficult these fires can be to monitor. Dense smoke, clouds and the forest canopy can hide low-intensity understory fires from standard fire-detection products. Researchers using additional VIIRS observations have identified substantially more fires around Santarém than appear in conventional active-fire counts.
Scientists expect the current wave of burning to continue until the rainy season returns, while other parts of northern South America could face elevated fire risk in the coming months.
Based on: NASA Earth Observatory, Fires Arrive in the Amazon Rainforest, 15 October 2026.