Brazil and Climate Change

Brazil and Climate Change

Like other countries around the world, Brazil is increasingly impacted by the climate change. Located in South America, it is the fifth largest country in the world with 8.51 million km², and due to this size has great climatic variations. With 93% of its territory located in the southern hemisphere and 7% in the northern hemisphere, several types of climate can be identified, like equatorial, tropical, high tropical, tropical moist, semiarid and subtropical.

All this diversity makes Brazil to be diversely affected by climate change. It is not possible to predict exactly which phenomena and with which intensity may occur, but it can entail tornadoes, floods, destruction of plantations, rising temperatures or rains.

For Brazil, agriculture is of extreme importance and one of the main commercial activities, so when phenomena occur affecting this productivity, it directly affects the economy and the lives of millions of people. With such variations, the quality of life in the country is also affected, worsening social aspects and development index.

We see in material from the Brazilian news portal G1 that, “In the Amazon rainforest, which occupies almost half of the national territory, global warming should also increase the occurrence of extreme weather events. A recent study shows that more droughts should occur in the east of the region, and more flooding in the west. The survey evaluated the projections of 35 computer simulations for the Amazonian climate and mapped the most likely impacts of climate change on the region in the face of a relatively pessimistic scenario in which CO₂ emissions continue to grow wildly.

In addition to the Amazon region in the country are found other biomes that are also affected, such as the “Pantanal”, “Cerrado” and “Mata Atlântica”

The main impacts due to climate change in Brazil are,

– reduction of water resources

– semi-arid vegetation will probably be replaced by a typical vegetation of the arid region

– Certain species may become extinct

– Decrease of groundwater

– Impact on the level of the seas and consequently on the mangroves

– 38 to 45% of “cerrado” plants are at risk of extinction and the temperature increases by 1.7 ° C

– Increased drought

– The conversion of forests into crops affects the climate because it alters the regional albedo and latent heat flux, causing the additional temperature increase in the summer

– Loss of biodiversity

– The increase in temperature and the decrease of water in the soil will lead to the savanization in the east region

There is a real need for projects that help to mitigate these effects along with the awareness of the population so that they can carry out actions that are within their reach. Climate change comes from a much larger proportion, but if everyone does their part and help we can prevent all these problems from spreading in a worse way.