Amazon fires from space, August 2019. Satellite image of smoke rising from wildfires in the states of Rondonia, Amazonas, Para, and Mato Grosso in southern Brazil. The 2019 Brazil wildfires consist of tens of thousands of wildfires that have occurred in the Amazon rainforest during the tropical dry season. This number is higher than usual, thought to be due to government policies allowing increased use of slash-and-burn clearing of forested areas for agricultural purposes. This has implications for global climate change. Some Brazilian states have declared states of emergency in response to the fires. This image, which includes country and state borders, was obtained on 13 August 2019, by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensors on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite.