Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center, the Pendleton Mazer Family Fund, and Abby Rockefeller and Lee Halprin.Jochen Schöngart darts back and forth along an escarpment just above the Amazon River, a short water taxi ride from downtown Manaus, Brazil. It’s still early this October morning in 2023, but it’s already hot and his face is beaded with sweat.
He snags the unprepossessing post and fishes up a wristwatch-size data logger tied to a length of twine. The average water temperature for this time of year is 30°C, but the sensor recently recorded a high of 39.1°C. Fleischmann says shallower parts of the lake may have reached 41°C on that same day in late September. The air that month was hot, too, about 1.5°C above average. Meanwhile, drought has shrunk the lake; by late October, Lake Tefé’s surface had sunk 6.
The record water temperatures were an obvious suspect for the calamity, but Marmontel’s team conducted more than 100 necropsies to eliminate other explanations. They found no evidence of infectious disease or a toxin. “We think that climate change is the major culprit,” she says. That worries her, she says, because it’s the only possibility with no local solution.
Climate change is an obvious suspect in the observed changes in the drought-fostering ocean conditions, although the mechanisms underlying its role are not clear. Some research suggests. And the broader increase in ocean temperatures caused by global warming could also be contributing, providing a backdrop for anomalous areas of hotter water in the Atlantic and Pacific.
In the future, excessively high water could also threaten some wildlife, says Rafael Rabelo, research coordinator at Mamirauá. He’s particularly concerned about the black squirrel monkey (. Mamirauá is conducting a modeling study to explore whether the higher flood waters expected in the future will damage the, or chief, of the Indigenous village of Betel.
Villagers tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the blaze with buckets of water and makeshift brooms. Luckily, a rain shower came that night and extinguished it. The farmers were spooked and too fearful of another fire to burn more fields. In community meetings, the village and three neighboring communities decided that next year they’ll try to prepare some fields without fire. The plan will require a tractor they hope to borrow from a regional development agency.