In 2024, the Amazon Rainforest underwent its most devastating forest fire season in more than two decades. According to a new study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the fire-driven forest degradation released an estimated 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, a sevenfold increase compared with the previous two years.
The carbon emissions from fires in 2024 surpassed those from deforestation for the first time on record. Brazil was the largest contributor, accounting for 61% of these emissions, followed by Bolivia with 32%, the study found.
“The escalating fire occurrence, driven by climate change and unsustainable land use, threatens to push the Amazon towards a catastrophic tipping point,” the authors write. “Urgent, coordinated efforts are crucial to mitigate these drivers and to prevent irreversible ecosystem damage.”
The researchers estimated that the total emissions from deforestation and fire-driven degradation in the Amazon in 2024 was 1,416 million metric tons of CO2. This is higher than Japan’s CO2 emissions in 2022, which ranked fifth after China, the U.S., India and Russia.
The 2023-24 Amazon drought was one of the most severe in recent history, fueled by the El Niño phenomenon, which causes lower rainfall in the region. Water levels in the Amazon’s main rivers, including the Solimões, Negro and Madeira, dropped to their lowest in more than 120 years.
Human-driven climate change has in fact made the Amazon Rainforest nearly 30 times more prone to fire, the 2023-24 State of Wildfires report found.
However, most blazes in 2024 would have likely been started by humans engaging in arson. Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, previously told Mongabay contributor Lucas Berti that in 2024, the dry, flammable forest became an opportunity for those wanting to deforest illegally.
According to the new study, fires affected 3.3 million hectares (8.2 million acres) of Amazon forest last year alone. The estimate is less than that of a Brazil-based government figure, which put the number at 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) in 2024 just for Brazil.
Facilitated by the large swaths of burned forest, deforestation in 2025 has also been rising after a historic drop of 31% from 2023 to 2024. Monthly deforestation data in Brazil showed an increase of 92% of deforestation in May compared with the same month in 2024. A midyear review suggested that deforestation alerts increased by 27% from January to June over the previous year.
“With a worsening of climate change and the greater fragility of forest cover, including primary cover, we are beginning to see a shift,” João Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary for Brazil’s Environment Ministry, said in June 2025.
“The tropical forest, which is naturally immune to large fires due to its humidity, is suffering a huge impact from climate change, reducing its resistance to fires and becoming more vulnerable,” he added.
Banner image: A forest fire in August 2025 in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. Image © Marizilda Cruppe/Greenpeace.
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