The Rio Guajará (Guajará River), part of the vast Amazon River delta
As COP30 kicks off in Belém, Brazil, we look at the significance of hosting this year’s UN climate conference in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
The world’s largest rainforest – home to more species of plants and animals than anywhere else on Earth – is opening its doors, giving humanity a chance to do right by the planet that hosts it. As we walk through the rainforest, we are humbled, as it reminds us that it is the heartbeat and the lungs of our planet.
Here in Belém, “the gateway to the Amazon”, life moves in time with nature. The air is thick with humidity, sudden tropical showers fall, followed by the hum of insects and the call of birds. Vultures circle above, herons perch on the riverbanks, and capybaras wander through the green patches that break the city’s skyline. Coconut water stalls line the streets, purple açaí leaves a natural liner around the lips of the men, women and children who eat it – with their fish or in their milkshakes. Even amongst the hustle and bustle, as the streets fill up, Belém is very clearly inseparable from the forest that cradles it.
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Representing the Holy See just prior to the opening of COP30, at the leaders’ summit on 7 November, Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, reminded delegates of Pope Leo XIV’s message: “If you want to cultivate peace, care for creation.” Cardinal Parolin reminded world leaders that the climate crisis is not only a question of technology or finance, but of justice and solidarity – pointing out that ‘those in the most vulnerable situations are the first to suffer,’ and he called for COP30 to become ‘a sign of hope’ in a world already ‘in flames’ from both environmental and human conflict.
His words echoed those of Pope Francis in Laudato si’, who wrote that “we have no such right” to destroy creation, reminding us that humanity’s vocation is not to dominate the earth but to till and keep it – to care for the world and for every creature that shares it with us.
The message is clear: caring for the planet is inseparable from caring for one another.
As delegates gather in Belém over the next two weeks, the world will watch for commitments that can bring together words and action, pray for funding that reaches the communities protecting the world’s organs, and hope for agreements that honour both people and planet.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) rose faster in 2024 than in any year since records began – far faster than scientists expected.
Our new satellite analysis shows that the Amazon rainforest, which has long been a huge absorber of carbon, is struggling to keep up. And worryingly, the satellite that made this discovery could soon be switched off.
Systematic measurements of CO₂ in the atmosphere began in the late 1950s, when the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii (chosen for its remoteness and untainted air) registered about 315 parts per million (ppm). Today, it’s more than 420ppm.
But just as important is the rate of change. The annual rise in global CO₂ has gone from below 1ppm in the 1960s to more than 2ppm a year in the 2010s. Every extra ppm represents about 2 billion tonnes of carbon – roughly four times the combined mass of every human alive today.
Across six decades of measurements, atmospheric CO₂ has gradually increased. There have been some large but temporary departures, typically associated with unusual weather caused by an El Niño in the Pacific. But the long-term trend is clear.
In 2023, CO₂ in the atmosphere grew by about 2.70ppm. That’s a large step up, but not too unusual. Yet in 2024, it was an unprecedented 3.73ppm.
How satellites observe atmospheric CO₂
Until recently, we could only monitor CO₂ through stations on the ground like the one in Hawaii. That changed with satellites such as Nasa’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2), launched in 2014.
The OCO-2 satellite analyses sunlight reflected from Earth. Carbon dioxide acts like a filter, absorbing specific wavelengths of light. By observing how much of that specific light is missing or dimmed when it reaches the satellite, scientists can accurately calculate how much CO₂ is in the atmosphere.
But air is always on the move. The CO₂ above any one point can come from many sources – local emissions, nearby forests, or air carried from far away. To untangle this mix, scientists use computer models that simulate how winds move CO₂ around the globe.
They then adjust these models until they match what the satellite sees. This gives us the most accurate estimate possible of where carbon is being released and where it’s being absorbed.
The decade-long data record from OCO-2 allows us to put 2023 and 2024 into historical context.
The result
From the satellite data, we infer that the largest changes in CO₂ emissions and absorption during 2023 and 2024, compared with the baseline year of 2022, were over tropical land.
Data from 2023 and 2024 shows the areas where more carbon was emitted (in red) and withdrawn (blue) compared with the ‘normal’ year of 2022. The Amazon stands out in both years. Feng et al
The largest change was over the Amazon, where much less CO₂ is being absorbed. Similar slowdowns also appeared over southern Africa and southeast Asia, parts of Australia, the eastern US, Alaska and western Russia.
Conversely, we detected more carbon being absorbed over western Europe, the US and central Canada.
Other data backs this up. For instance, plants emit a faint glow as they photosynthesise – remarkably, we can see this glow from space. Measurements of this glow along with vegetation greenness both show that tropical ecosystems were less active in 2023 and 2024.
Our analysis suggests that warmer temperatures explain most of the Amazon’s reduced capability to absorb carbon. Elsewhere in the tropics, changes in rainfall and soil moisture were more important.
Why 2023 and 2024 were special
In many ways, these years resembled previous El Niño years such as 2015-16, when drought and heat led to less carbon absorption and more wildfires. But what’s interesting about 2023-24 is that the responsible El Niño event was comparatively weak.
Something else must be amplifying the effect. The most likely culprit is the extensive, record-breaking drought that has gripped much of the Amazon basin. When plants are already stressed by a lack of water, even modest warming can push them beyond their tolerance, reducing their ability to absorb carbon.
Small boats left stranded as the Tapajós river (a major Amazon tributary) dries up in late 2023. Tarcisio Schnaider / shutterstock
Roughly half of the CO₂ emitted by humans stays in the atmosphere. The other half is absorbed, more or less equally, by the land and the oceans. If drought or heat means plants are less able to absorb carbon, even temporarily, more of our emissions will remain in the air.
Our ability to meet climate targets relies on nature continuing to provide this vital carbon storage.
Satellite shutdown
It’s not yet clear whether 2023-24 is a short-term blip or an early sign of a long-term shift. But evidence points to an increasingly fragile situation, as tropical forests are stressed by hot and dry conditions.
Understanding exactly how and where these ecosystems are changing is essential if we want to know their future role in the climate, and whether drought will delay their recovery. One step is to urgently send scientists to tropical ecosystems to document recent changes in person.
That’s also where satellites like OCO-2 come in. They offer global and almost real-time coverage of how carbon dioxide is moving between the land, oceans and atmosphere, helping us separate temporary effects like El Niño from deeper changes.
Yet, despite being fit and healthy and having enough fuel to keep it going until 2040, OCO-2 is at risk of being shut down due to proposed Nasa budget cuts.
We wouldn’t be blind without it – but we’d be seeing far less clearly. Losing OCO-2 would mean losing our best tool for monitoring changes in the carbon cycle, and we will all be scientifically poorer for it.
The Amazon is sending us a warning. We must keep watching – while we still can.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
This aerial view shows Amazon forest degradation in the Menkragnoti Indigenous Territory in Altamira, Pará state, Brazil, on August 28, 2019. (Photo: Joao Laet/AFP/Getty Images)
The world’s largest rainforest showed “ominous indicators,” including wildfires and extreme drought, in 2024.
The Amazon, sometimes called the “lungs of the planet,” this year showed signs of further inching toward a much-feared tipping point, threatening the very existence of the world’s largest rainforest.
Rampant wildfires and extreme drought ravaged large parts of the Amazon in 2024. The fires and dry conditions were fueled by deforestation and the El Niño weather pattern, and also made worse by climate change, according to the World Economic Forum. “The number of fires reached its highest level in 14 years this September,” the group reported in October.
Drought has also impacted the Amazon River, causing one of the river’s main tributaries to drop to its lowest level ever recorded, according to October reporting from The Associated Press. The drop in the river has negatively impacted local economies and food supplies.
Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, told the AP last week that the fires and droughts experienced across the Amazon in 2024 “could be ominous indicators that we are reaching the long-feared ecological tipping point.”
“Humanity’s window of opportunity to reverse this trend is shrinking, but still open,” he said.
The Amazon plays a vital role in keeping the planet healthy. 150-200 billion tons of carbon are stored in the Amazon, and it also carries 20% of the earth’s fresh water to sea.
According to the World Economic Forum, if the Amazon tipping point is reached, “it will release billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere through fires and plants dying off. This would further exacerbate climate change and make the 1.5°C goal impossible to achieve. It would also alter weather patterns, which would impact agricultural productivity and global food supplies.”
A paper published in the journal Nature in February indicates that up to half of the rainforest could hit a tipping point by the middle of the century. “We estimate that by 2050, 10% to 47% of Amazonian forests will be exposed to compounding disturbances that may trigger unexpected ecosystem transitions and potentially exacerbate regional climate change,” explained the researchers behind the paper.
However, it wasn’t all bad news out of the Amazon in 2024. According to the AP, the amount of deforestation in Brazil and Colombia declined in this year. In Brazil, which houses the largest chunk of the Amazon, forest loss dropped 30.6% compared to the year prior, bringing it to the lowest level of destruction in nearly a decade.
The improvement is an about-face from a couple of years ago, when the country registered 15-year high of deforestation during the leadership of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil is now led by the left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who—despite presiding over this drop in deforestation—has also come under scrutiny, as AP noted, by environmentalist for backing projects that they argue could harm the environment.
Right-wing groups are peddling false claims that the heavy rainfall that led to the region’s disastrous flooding in May is not related to climate change.
On May 9, volunteers and emergency workers were still rescuing people and animals who remained stranded on the sixth day of flooding on the streets of Rio Grande do Sul’s capital, Porto Alegre. Social media images of the rooftop rescue of a horse named Caramelo shocked the world.
A day before the dramatic rescue, Porto Alegre’s deputy mayor, Ricardo Gomes, appeared on a livestream wearing a cap with the Brasil Paralelo logo. Brasil Paralelo is a far-right media company with a streaming platform focusing on “journalism, entertainment, and education,” as its website states. The company was founded in Porto Alegre in 2016 and serves as a main channel of climate denialism among right-wing groups in Brazil. By wearing the Brasil Paralelo logo, Gomes associated himself with an institution that experts say is a purveyor of climate denialism, at the height of a climate-related disaster.
Some days later, Ricardo Felício, a professor of Brasil Paralelo’s education wing who has also appeared on many of the platform’s documentaries, wrote that climate change did not cause the extreme rainfall in South Brazil. He published his opinions in the Revista Oeste (West Magazine), a print and online publication that caters to far-right followers of former President Jair Bolsonaro, saying “CO2 has nothing to do with it!”
Southern Brazil was under water for the entire month of May, and two months later, it’s still facing the consequences of the worst flood in its history. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced – 180 have died, and 32 are still missing.
Flooded rivers swept away entire communities in a disaster on par with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. The town of Estrela, located on the banks of Taquari River, was more than 70 percent submerged. In recent years, the region has experienced more and more extreme rainfall. Residents of towns on the Taquari River are still feeling the impacts of their third consecutive flood in a six-month period.
Porto Alegre, with 1.4 million inhabitants, was flooded for four weeks between May and June due to swelling water from the Guaiba River and failures of the city’s anti-flood system. The region’s main airport, Salgado Filho International Airport, is not expected to operate again until December.
Porto Alegre’s mayor, Sebastião Melo, and Deputy Mayor Gomes have led its city council since 2021. Both were elected in the wake of Bolsonarism and won decisive victories. And both have faced media criticism for failures in managing the city’s emergency responses to the flood and for failing to update its anti-flood system.
Gomes has participated in events run by Atlas Network, an extensive global collective of more than 500 think tanks, many known to have a history of working against climate action. He attended Atlas Network’s 2019 CEO Summit of the Americas, where leaders of right-wing think tanks gathered to exchange ideas. He appeared at the summit as president of RELIAL, a network of right-wing Latin American research organizations. He is a member of Atlas Network’s Global Council of CEOs team.
Gomes also participated in Atlas Network’s 2020 Latin America Liberty Forum online, again representing RELIAL. The politician is also a long-standing ally, teacher, and host of a political series on Brasil Paralelo’s YouTube channel. His political connections reveal an intricate network that links Brazilian far-right organizations that deny climate change with international think tanks.
Brasil Paralelo’s Roots
In the months after the center-left Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2016, far-right proponents established Brasil Paralelo, which arose from the growth of far-right ideas that gained ground in the country at the time. Its five founders, who were students, claimed that mass media was overwhelmingly left-wing, and they wanted to challenge mainstream public opinion about the nation’s political crisis after Rouseff’s impeachment.
Three of the original founders, Lucas Ferrugem, Henrique Viana, and Filipe Valerim, now run the company. Experts interviewed for the platform’s first documentaries included names from Instituto Millenium, Instituto Liberal, and Instituto Mises, partner think tanks of Atlas Network in Brazil in 2016.
A panel titled “Entrepreneurship for Common Good” by Atlas Network partner Acton Institute used Brasil Paralelo’s founding and development as a case study in 2021. The panel explored how “entertainment can shape a society’s culture,” and Brasil Paralelo’s role within the “prevailing cultural winds to point Brazil towards pillars of freedom and virtue through a holistic approach to education and entrepreneurship,” as the video states.
Alejandro Chafuen, president of Atlas Network between 1991 and 2018 and a Mont Pelerin Society member, taught a Brasil Paralelo course about faith and free-market ideas in 2019. Chafuen also mentioned the media company in his Forbes magazine column in 2023, in which he compared the Brazilian organization to the U.S. nonprofit conservative media group PragerU. He made the same comparison to his YouTube subscribers (over 3.38 million) and Instagram followers (2.5 million), indicating that Brasil Paralelo surpassed PragerU’s audience levels with more than 300,000 subscribers on YouTube and around 400,000 on Instagram.
Chafuen compares the popularity of Brasil Paralelo to widespread support for Olavo de Carvalho, the deceased influential far-right philosopher who was also known for his strident scientific denialism, including climate denialism. Chafuen also wrote in Forbes that “Brasil Paralelo is planning to land in the United States and replicate its success with U.S.-focused topics, teams, and profiles.”
In August 2023, Brasil Paralelo ran an article raising doubts about the effects of climate change stemming from a speech by UN Secretary Antonio Guiterrez claiming that “the era of global boiling has arrived”. According to the article,”It is not a question of denying climate change, but of discussing whether or not humankind influences this process and to what degree the planet will warm up (or cool down).”
Chafuen’s article promoted a 2021 Brasil Paralelo documentary called “Cortina de Fumaça” (“Smoke Screen”). It stated that the documentary seeks to answer questions such as, “How does the environmental movement affect the economy in Brazil and other countries? What lies behind some of the main environmentalist misinformation?”
Patrick Moore, a known climate science denier, is presented in the documentary as a co-founder of Greenpeace. Years before, DeSmog had reported that this claim was false. Moore stated in the documentary that Greenpeace is “a conspiracy organization, spreading junk science around the world.”
One of the sections in “Smoke Screen,” which is available on YouTube, is titled “Environmental apocalyptic predictions that are false.” The journalist Augusto Nunes, one of the founders of Revista Oeste, said in the segment that the Amazon rainforest is not being destroyed, contradicting official data from 2021. Other sources in Brazil, including Aldo Rebelo, former minister of defense during Rousseff’s government, supported the same argument.
According to the documentary, environmental campaigners’ criticisms and so-called “lies” about the Amazon rainforest’s deforestation are attempts to protect the U.S. and European agricultural markets.
In another article in September 2023, Brasil Paralelo defended the idea that global warming legitimizes NGOs’ actions pushing international actions such as the Paris Agreement, which the platform claims keeps developing countries producing less while first-world countries maintain their production.
In an interview with The Intercept Brasil, researcher Renata Nagamine from the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (Cebrap) said Brasil Paralelo’s “Smoke Screen” uses a “scientific repertoire on the margins of climate science.”
When contacted by DeSmog, representatives for Brasil Paralelo did not respond to requests for comment.
“CO2 Has Nothing to Do With It!”
Climate change boosted the rainfall volume in Rio Grande do Sul by 15 percent, according to a study by the website Clima Meter, which confirmed the influence of climate change on the recent flooding disaster in the region.
Clima Meter is “an experimental rapid framework for understanding extreme weather events in a changing climate based on looking at similar past weather situations.” From the analysis of the patterns of local precipitation and the ElNiño-Southern Oscillation, the researchers interpreted the “Brazil floods as an event whose local characteristics can mostly be ascribed to human driven climate change.”
Flooding in South Brazil on May 5. Credit: Ricardo Stuckert/Wikimedia Commons
Davide Faranda, a researcher of the Laboratory for Sciences of Climate and Environment at the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace and coauthor of Clima Meter’s study on Brazil’s flooding, said in an interview with the local newspaper, GaúchaZH, that floods have been intensified by the burning of fossil fuels and have a major impact on vulnerable communities, which bear the brunt of climate change.
However, Ricardo Felício, who teaches courses at Brasil Paralelo and is a professor of geography at the University of São Paulo (USP), offered a contradictory explanation for the disaster.
“It is confusing to relate the climate to a meteorological scenario of large dimensions, which is the case here,” wrote Felício in his May 12 weekly column in Revista Oeste. “CO2 has nothing to do with it!”
In addition to writing for Revista Oeste, Felício is a well-known climate denier in Brazilian politics. DeSmog uncovered an interview with Felício on a once-popular Brazilian TV show, where Felício stated in 2012, “There is no scientific proof of global warming.” Brazil’s ex-president Bolsonaro tweeted an interview between Nando Moura, a well-known right-wing influencer, and Felicio in 2017.
Between 2017 and 2021, Felício gave several lectures at universities and trade associations across the country denying climate change after the Aprosoja Mato Grosso (an association of soybean growers) sponsored his talks, according to a BBC investigation.
Journalists and media executives founded Revista Oeste in 2020. It is a self-proclaimed conservative outlet and claims the problems of capitalism should be solved with more capitalism.
The magazine’s print cover in June 2024, a month after the tragedy in Rio Grande do Sul, showed the planet resting on a palm, followed by the headline “The global warming hoax.” The periodical also published other articles on the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, denying climate change had a part in the disaster.
“Historically, apocalyptic predictions about the climate have not come close to coming true. Now, activists are blaming climate change for the floods in Rio Grande do Sul,” wrote the journalist Myllena Valença. The piece claimed that “facts overturn the delirious prophecies of environmental activists, who for decades have been announcing disasters caused by global warming.” Felício is a leading source in the report.
The June print edition also featured an interview with the president of Environmental Progress, Michael Shellenberger, a well-known nuclear energy enthusiast and a Republican witness in climate hearings in the U.S. Congress. In the interview, he pointed out he is optimistic about the environment and pessimistic about civilization. “I’m worried about the hysteria around global warming,” Shellenberger said.
When contacted by DeSmog, representatives for Revista Oeste did not respond to requests for comment.
A Well-Connected Deputy Mayor
Donations poured into Rio Grande do Sul in the aftermath of the flooding disaster to help people who had lost everything. Brasil Paralelo asked for donations for an organization called Instituto Cultural Floresta (ICF).
Porto Alegre’s Deputy Mayor Gomes also requested donations to the same organization, even though his City Hall made its own donation channel available, an Agência Públicainvestigation revealed last month.
The ICF is a nonprofit organization based in Porto Alegre, and according to its website, it focuses on providing security forces with military equipment. Leaders and members of the organization are connected to the Instituto de Estudos Empresariais (IEE), an Atlas Network think tank partner in Brazil that promotes the right-wing annual meeting, Liberty Forum, which is sponsored directly by Atlas Network, and boosts right-wing political candidates.
Leonardo Fração is president of the ICF and a former IEE president. He spoke at the Liberty Forum in 2018 and in 2010.
Other ICF members are affiliated with IEE, including Bruno Zaffari, the owner of real estate and supermarket companies, and Wilson Ling, the director of the plastic packaging and forestry company Évora S.A.
Gomes held various positions, including president of the IEE from 2009 to 2012. But his relations with right-wing think tanks stretch much further. Between 2016 and 2020, he served as the president of RELIAL, and he also is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. DeSmog research found that Mont Pelerin Society members are affiliated with over 100 organizations that also appear on the membership list of the Atlas Network.
Atlas Network also quoted Gomes in a report about the Latin America Liberty Forum in 2021.
RELIAL presents itself as a network of brain trusts that “disseminate and implement liberal principles as their flag.” Agustín Etchebarne, a member and a former director of RELIAL, is also the general director of the Fundación Libertad y Progreso, an Argentinian Atlas-affiliated think tank that supported the election of far-right Argentinian President Javier Gerardo Milei.
Atlas Network awarded Fundación Libertad y Progresoa a grant in 2024. The organization spent the money to promote an international summit in partnership with the Cato Institute for the six-month anniversary of the inauguration of Milei. The event took place June 11-12 in Buenos Aires, and Milei attended.
Fundación Libertad y Progresoa promoted an international summit in partnership with the Cato Institute for the six-month anniversary of the inauguration of Argentininan President Javier Milei. Credit: Wikipedia
When contacted for comment, Atlas Network said in a statement that the organization “has no grant programs related to climate change and makes no policy prescriptions to its partners on the subject of climate change.” It also stated that it “does not fund initiatives advocating against the existence of climate change.”
The organization stated that it “has no partnerships with candidates, parties, or government officials,” and that its “partners are independent, nonprofit organizations engaged in public policy issues.”
Atlas also asserted that “there are no ‘Atlas Network groups’ in Brazil,” but instead “independent partner organizations that apply to receive training, grants, and networking opportunities from Atlas Network.” The think tank network also stated that its partners are “each governed independently and are not managed by our organization.”
Political Negligence and Climate Denialism
The media has widely criticized Porto Alegre’s Mayor Melo for his crisis management issues and his administration’s low budget for flood prevention. To defend against the criticism, Melo claimed online that, “I’m not a denialist on anything, much less on the climate issue.”
Porto Alegre suffered two severe floods in 2023, including its biggest flood since 1941. However, since 2021, the city council reduced its investment in flood protection, and added no additional protection in 2023.
Experts also condemned the city’s failure to maintain its anti-flooding system, which was designed in the 1970s. The Municipal Department of Water and Sewage, which operates the system, has laid off more than half of its employees since 2013. In addition, Melo’s term in office has included environmental scandals and conflicts with environmentalists and indigenous people.
When contacted by DeSmog, Porto Alegre’s City Hall Press Office, which represents Melo and Gomes, did not respond to requests for comment.
When the flooding crisis deepened in Porto Alegre, Melo used a Bolsonarist style, applying the motto that every person looks out for his own, which summarizes his way of doing politics. “If you have a house on the beach and can afford to leave, I recommend that you leave and go to the beach,” he said, talking about wealthier families who have second homes at the beach. This comes from the mayor of a city where inequality is so entrenched that many people don’t have one home, let alone a second beach house.
Gomes has said he will not seek reelection with Melo this year, but that he will continue supporting Melo against “the radical left.” Everything suggests, however, that the Brasil Paralelo cap will officially be part of his uniform.
One of our planet’s most vital defences against global warming is itself being ravaged by climate change.
It was the main driver of the Amazon rainforest’s worst drought in at least half a century, according to a new study.
Often described as the “lungs of the planet”, the Amazon plays a key role in removing warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But rapid deforestation has left it more vulnerable to weather extremes.
While droughts in the Amazon are not uncommon, last year’s event was “exceptional”, the researchers say.
In October, the Rio Negro – one of the world’s largest rivers – reached its lowest recorded level near Manaus in Brazil, surpassing marks going back over 100 years.
As well as being a buffer against climate change, the Amazon is a rich source of biodiversity, containing around 10% of the world’s species – with many more yet to be discovered.
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One trigger for these dry conditions is El Niño – a natural weather system where sea surface temperatures increase in the East Pacific Ocean. This affects global rainfall patterns, particularly in South America.
But human-caused climate change was the main driver of the extreme drought, according to the World Weather Attribution group
