Thursday, 22 August 2024.
“Pantanal” is a word that comes from the original in Portuguese, “pântano”, meaning wetland.
It is also the name for one of the most relevant biomes in Brazil, the one that connects the Amazon region with the South, over which significant aerial rivers “flow” (or better, “fly”).
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Pantanal, floodplain in south-central Brazil that extends into northeast Paraguay and southeast Bolivia. It lies mainly within the Brazilian estados (states) of Mato Grosso do Sul and Mato Grosso. The Pantanal is one of the world’s largest freshwater wetlands, and the extent of its seasonally dynamic area is estimated to be from 54,000 square miles (140,000 square km) to 81,000 square miles (210,000 square km). The wetlands extend for about 375 miles (600 km) north-to-south along the banks of the upper Paraguay River and several of its tributaries, including the São Lourenço and the Taquari rivers”. Click here to read more at te source.
El Niño and severe droughts are threatening the region year after year, specially during winter, mid-year in the Southern Hemisphere.
And the wildfires that comes with that, similar to Canada, United States, Greece, Spain, Chile and Australia as you can recall in the article “2023: A year of intense global wildfire activity” from Copernicus, “Europe’s eyes on Earth”.
Pantanal is - unfortunately - also on the international headlines:
“Brazil: Fires ravage 1.3 mi hectares, surge again in Pantanal” (Agência Brasil)
“Early Fires in Brazil’s Pantanal” (NASA’s Earth Observatory)
Among several other unwanted consequences, air over a significant part of Brazil gets smoky, with impacts to life, including through enhanced business risks.
Private roads operators, for example.
Given the size of Brazil, they are adding real time information from climate satellites to their Operational Control Centers so that, through georeferencing, they can issue alerts about the existence of fires on the banks of highways. Click here for more details about this partnership between CCR Group and Climatempo.
This means that satellites and meteorology are becoming part of more businesses, adding a dramatic real-time feature to enterprise risk management.
Lastly, click at the image below for the regular bulletins by the Brazilian Government about the Pantanal fires.
