The city, along with parts of the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Paraná, was blanketed by smoke from wildfires raging in the Amazon, according to local news reports.
Fire season in the Amazon is just beginning—it runs from August through October, with its peak coming in mid-September, and the smoke is already so bad that it can be seen from space.
Last week, NASA released satellite images showing the patchwork of fires and smoke in Brazil.
According to Parrington, fires in the Amazon release an average of 500-600 metric tons of carbon dioxide over the course of a typical year.
Satellite imagery has tracked the movement of the smoke, which completely filled the air in São Paulo.
He said that in his ten years of living in São Paulo, he’s never seen wildfire smoke like that.
While the smoke from the fires threatens the health of those living nearby, more fires represent an added stressor for the Amazon rainforest as a whole. »