The 2023-2024 Amazon Drought
node · earth · Amazon Basin, basin-wide
The most severe drought in the basin's instrumental record, running across two dry seasons and driven by an El Nino coinciding with record warmth in the tropical North Atlantic - the two mechanisms that had acted separately in 2005 and 2010 arriving together. The Rio Negro at Manaus fell below its previous record low in October 2023 and lower again in October 2024, on a gauge series more than a century long. River transport failed across large areas, isolating communities that have no roads; and in a tributary lake of the middle Amazon, water temperatures rose far enough to kill river dolphins in numbers, a mass mortality that gave the drought its defining image. An international rapid attribution study concluded that climate change, rather than El Nino, was the dominant driver of the agricultural and ecological drought. If 2005 established that the Amazon's carbon sink was conditional and 2010 established that severe droughts could recur within a few years, 2023 to 2024 established that they could last through more than one wet season - which is the condition under which forest mortality stops being recoverable.
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Evidence · 1
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 2
- The 2010 Amazon Droughtcomparable_to
- Manausaffects
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 20 blocks · 1 evidence · 14 related
- Story
- The most severe drought in the basin's instrumental record, running across two dry seasons and driven by an El Nino coinciding with record warmth in the tropical North Atlantic - the two mechanisms that had acted separately in 2005 and 2010 arriving together. The Rio Negro at Manaus fell below its previous record low in October 2023 and lower again in October 2024, on a gauge series more than a century long. River transport failed across large areas, isolating communities that have no roads; and in a tributary lake of the middle Amazon, water temperatures rose far enough to kill river dolphins in numbers, a mass mortality that gave the drought its defining image. An international rapid attribution study concluded that climate change, rather than El Nino, was the dominant driver of the agricultural and ecological drought. If 2005 established that the Amazon's carbon sink was conditional and 2010 established that severe droughts could recur within a few years, 2023 to 2024 established that they could last through more than one wet season - which is the condition under which forest mortality stops being recoverable.
- Knowledge
- Manaus
- The 2010 Amazon Drought
- The 2023-2024 Amazon Drought
- Connections
- The 2010 Amazon Drought
- Manaus
- The most severe drought in the instrumental record
- The 2005 Amazon Drought
- The 2023-2024 Amazon Drought
- A second severe drought follows within five years
- Meeting of the Waters (Encontro das Aguas)
- Amazon Basin
- The 2023-2024 Amazon Drought
- A second severe drought follows within five years
- The most severe drought in the instrumental record
- Evidence
- Supports the attribution of the 2023-2024 Amazon drought principally to human-caused climate change rather than to El Nino. V55 verification basis: not retrieved in this session; the study title is given as remembered and the quantified likelihood ratio is deliberately not quoted. A curator should confirm the exact title and figures.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
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/atlas?object=PHENOMENON_DROUGHT_2023&experience=PHENOMENON_DROUGHT_2023