A general view of the Chilean capital under a heavy layer of smog during a winter day, in Santiago, Chile, July 27, 2023.
An unprecedented winter heatwave is sweeping across a large chunk of South America, with temperatures forecast to exceed 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in southwestern Brazil in the coming days.
It comes as part of a recent trend of extreme heat stretching across the globe, with the month of July poised to be recognized as the world’s hottest in history.
Unlike the extraordinary temperatures recently recorded during the northern hemisphere’s summer season, however, countries including Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Brazil are supposed to be experiencing temperatures associated with the middle of winter.
Scientists say the winter heat is being fueled by the climate emergency and the El Niño phenomenon. El Niño is a naturally occuring climate pattern that contributes to higher temperatures across the globe.
Argentina’s capital city of Buenos Aires on Tuesday registered temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius, in what the country’s weather service said reflected the hottest start to early August in 117 years of data.
Temperatures are typically around 15 degrees Celsius in Buenos Aires at this time of year, and have not exceeded 30 degrees Celsius in winter since 2014.
“Climate change is not a distant scenario,” Argentina’s national weather service said in a Facebook post earlier this week. “[It] is here and it is urgent to act.”
The southern part of the continent has suffered the worst of the winter heat in recent days, with temperatures expected to remain at abnormally high levels in early August.
Climatologist Maximiliano Herrera says South America’s scorching heat represents one of the most “extreme events the world has ever seen” and one that is “rewriting all [climatic] books.”
“Numbers speak for themselves. And it will get worse,” Herrera said Thursday via the X platform, formerly known as Twitter.