Extreme Temperature Diary- Thursday November 16th, 2023/Main Topic: Brazil is Baking

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The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

Main Topic: Brazil is Baking

Dear Diary. Today I was going to concentrate on our record warm October, which statistically across the globe was by far the warmest October in mankind’s history. You can read details about that from Bob Henson’s fine post here:

Last month was by far the world’s hottest October on record » Yale Climate Connections

Instead, we need to concentrate on one unnerving consequence of all of that global heat. Brazil has been baking, making life very uncomfortable for residents and most importantly, threatening the Amazon with drought and yet more deforestation. The last time we touched on how hot Brazil had become was in September:

Extreme Temperature Diary- Wednesday September 20th, 2023/Main Topic: Boiling Brazil – Guy On Climate

As I keep saying, drought breeds more heat and then more drought in a vicious feedback cycle.

Fast forward to late spring in Brazil and heat records are falling in droves at major cities of Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro. When Rio reported a heat index of an ungodly 58.5°C (137°F) we saw these blood red 850 millibar temperature anomalies across South America:

There are some places across the vast country that is Brazil in which too much rain is falling. As we have witnessed, this is what we can expect from climate change:

Records continue to fall:

Here are more details from the New Indian Express:

El Nino to blame? Not yet summer in Brazil, but dangerous heat wave sweeping the country- The New Indian Express

El Nino to blame? Not yet summer in Brazil, but dangerous heat wave sweeping the country

Extreme heat can affect breathing, kidneys, and the heart, with the very young and elderly particularly at risk.

Published: 16th November 2023 06:31 PM  |   Last Updated: 16th November 2023 06:31 PM

A youth cools off in a water fountain at Madureira Park amid a heat wave in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (AP photo)

By Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO: It’s still spring in Brazil, but a dangerous heat wave is sweeping across large swathes of the country, forcing Rio de Janeiro’s vendors off the streets due to health alerts and driving up energy demand amid reports of power outages.

Most Brazilian states face “great danger” from the heat, according to the National Institute of Meteorology. The institution issued a red alert for the center-west, southeast and parts of the north warning of “a high probability of major damage and accidents, with risks to physical integrity or even human life.”

The heat index — a combination of temperature and humidity — hit 58.5 degrees Celsius (137 Fahrenheit) Tuesday morning in Rio, the highest index ever recorded there. Actual temperatures dropped slightly on Wednesday but were forecast to rise again to 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) on Thursday.

Cariocas — as residents of Rio are known — have always seen sun, heat and the beach as part of their identity, said Núbia Beray, coordinator of Rio de Janeiro Federal University’s GeoClima laboratory. But this is too much even for many of them, she said.

“Cariocas come home from work in buses without air conditioning. Street vendors cannot work because they sometimes faint. The heat kills,” Beray said.

Extreme heat can affect breathing, kidneys, and the heart, with the very young and elderly particularly at risk.

“Maximum 39°C and it’s not even summer yet,” Rio’s city hall said Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter. The mayor’s office recommended eating fruit and vegetables and keeping an umbrella handy for shade.

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In Sao Paulo, temperatures reached 37.7 degrees Celsius (99.9 F), just short of a record, according to meteorology company MetSul. Mato Grosso do Sul state, in the nation’s interior, recorded 43 degrees Celsius (109.4 F) last week — the record for actual temperature during this heat wave, according to the country’s institute of meteorology, known by the Portuguese acronym Inmet.

Brazilians turned to fans, air conditioners and dehumidifiers to cool down, with utilities reporting record energy demand. Power outages were reported in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Amid the high heat, wildfires are burning widely in the Pantanal biome, the world’s biggest tropical wetlands spanning parts of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul states. The fires have ravaged an area about the size of Cyprus, or more than 947,000 hectares (about 3,600 square miles), according to the Environmental Satellite Applications Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Temperatures across South America are affected by the climate phenomenon El Niño, a periodic naturally occurring event that warms surface waters in the Equatorial Pacific region. But this year, ocean temperature rose extremely quickly – in a couple of months, said Danielle Ferreira, a climatologist at Inmet.

“This indicates that the impacts are accelerating,” Ferreira said.

In Brazil, El Niño has historically caused droughts in the north and intense rainfall in the south, Ferreira said. This year, the impacts of the climate event have been particularly dramatic.

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In the Amazon rainforest, the drought has been so severe communities dependent on the dried-up waterways are stranded without supply of fuel, food or filtered water. And in Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, devastating floods killed dozens.

Scientists say extreme weather is happening more frequently due to human-caused climate change.

Heat waves have become seven times more frequent in the past seven decades, according to a study published this week by the National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency. The current one is the eighth to hit Brazil this year.

For the first time ever, the country now has a region that has the characteristics of a desert — in the northeastern Bahia state, a study from the federal agency showed this month.

As global temperatures rise, water evaporates more rapidly. Desertification, as this phenomenon is known, is also advancing in other regions, said one of the authors of the study, hydrologist Javier Tomasella.

“We have never seen anything like it,” Tomasella said.

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Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:

Here is some new October and November 2023 climatology:

Here is More Climate and Weather News from Thursday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)

Today’s News on Sustainable Energy, Traditional Polluting Energy from Fossil Fuel, and the Green Revolution:

More from the Weather Department:

More on the Environment and Nature:

More on Other Science and the Beauty of Earth and this Universe:

If you like these posts and my work on record temperature ratios, please contribute via my PayPal widget on this site. Thanks in advance for any support. 

Guy Walton… “The Climate Guy”

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