On the first day of the Brazilian spring, the country experienced high temperatures in different parts of the territory, the most affected areas being Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and some locations in the Amazon. Some citizens have found a way to counteract the heat by installing “green roofs.”
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The heat gives Brazilians no respite. The National Institute of Meteorology of Rio de Janeiro reported temperatures reaching up to 42 degrees Celsius in some cities of the South American country this September 24.
Sao Paulo was one of the metropolises where the spring heat wave has most dismayed its inhabitants. With 36.5 degrees Celsius, the city of São Paulo is experiencing the highest temperature so far this year and one of the most intense on record, since the meteorological authority began operations in 1943.
“I like the heat, but this is too much. It’s been at least three years since we had these temperatures and we’re just coming out of winter,” said Leonardo Callipo, a 27-year-old psychologist and resident of Sao Paulo, a city that had its worst winter. hot since 1961 according to records from the National Institute of Meteorology.
Fires in the Amazon
On the other hand, the impact of the heat has been much more thunderous in rural areas, since the structure of the buildings within the towns mainly comprises elements that are easy to burn, which causes large fires that destroy everything they find. They are not controlled.
“The fire comes from the sides, it comes here from the front and from behind. Now we don’t know where the fire is coming from. The fire is already burning the ground,” said Alice Pimentel, a 55-year-old farmer and resident of the town of Kanamari. in the Brazilian Amazon, while describing how the fire had destroyed part of his crops.
June 2023 has been the month with the most fire records in Brazilian territory for 15 years, something that experts attribute to the passage of the meteorological phenomenon ‘El Niño’, which this year has hit harder as a result of climate change and the lack of of winds.
“Green roofs” to combat the heat
Rio de Janeiro is another of the Brazilian cities where high temperatures have been recorded, with thermometers in beach homes reaching 42 degrees Celsius at the beginning of spring. For this reason, residents of the most marginalized neighborhoods who do not have access to air conditioning are looking for different solutions to withstand the powerful heat.
From the favela, Luis Cassiano, a 53-year-old environmentalist, climbs to the roofs of the houses to place bunches of plants on the roofs, turning them into what he calls “green roofs,” which in addition to helping the environment, regulate the temperature inside homes that have one.
“We cannot put trees in the favela because there is no more space, but we have a lot of space above the houses that can be used for planting (…) The biggest advantage is that it lowers the temperature, but also the houses have a prettier appearance and attract to birds and butterflies,” said Cassiano, who offers his alternative to traditional air conditioning systems.
While autumn approaches in the northern hemisphere of the planet, summer is barely announced for the south of the globe, where unusually high temperatures have also been recorded to be the ‘cold season’ of the year, which shows more and more insistence that climate change is a tangible, real problem that must be urgently addressed by the governments of the world.
With EFE and AFP
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