More than 100 dolphins dead in Amazon as water hits 102 degrees Fahrenheit

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/01/americas/amazon-river-dolphins-dead-temperatures-drought-intl-hnk/index.html

by hnuser0000 • 3 years ago

128 55 3 years ago

bondarchuk• 3 years ago

=38.88°C

chungy2• 3 years ago

It's probably suffice to say 39°C. It's unlikely the temperature was exactly 102°F; these measures are almost always rounded to the whole unit.

cesarb2• 3 years ago

According to a recent article in Portuguese (https://g1.globo.com/am/amazonas/noticia/2023/10/01/icmbio-v...) "[...] em alguns pontos do lago a temperatura está ultrapassando a marca dos 39°" so the correct value is "above 39°C".

foobarian• 3 years ago

There was a similar report earlier this summer from the Florida coast. Wouldn't it be deadly to swim in waters that warm? (I mean clearly it was for the dolphins, wondering about human ability to cool when perspiration is not possible)

toomuchtodo2• 3 years ago

Anything above 104F/40C will rapidly lead to heatstroke in humans, that’s why hot tubs are kept at 100-102F. Depending on human, you’ll last 10-20 minutes, but the flesh eating bacteria or brain eating amoeba might still get you.

Edit: hah

38• 3 years ago

flesh eating bacteria or brain eating amoeba might still get you.

Wanna add some context here?

shwaj• 3 years ago

And I have to imagine that 10-20 minutes would drop significantly if you were exerting yourself instead of relaxing.

rojeee• 3 years ago

According to NHS ophthalmologists at Moorfields eye hospital, I had acanthamoeba keratitis - a rare eye infection which… well… just Google pictures for what happens if left untreated. Theory is, I picked it up after staying in a hot tub too long and then leaving contact lenses in over night.

It’s so rare that the trainees never see any patients with it. The consultant asked me if I was OK for all the doctors there that night to have a look. They were fascinated but I was in a fair amount of pain!

I had to apply drops of what was effectively bleach to my eye for six months to ensure it went. Very painful. The diagnostic process was incredibly painful too. I can’t wear lenses anymore as I think my cornea is permanently damaged. Luckily my vision is back to normal but took nearly a year to recover.

Don’t sleep in your lenses. Don’t wear lenses in the hot tub!

jazzyjackson• 3 years ago

102 is a good temp for a hot tub. Definitely not deadly, but would not be helpful to cool down on a sweltering day neither (actually I never had the experience of sitting in a hot tub that was cooler than the air, maybe when its 130 out, 100 is refreshingly cool)

anyway my bigger concern would be brain eating amoeba

edit: jinx

amluto• 3 years ago

I tried this once (in a swimming pool, not a hot tub) -- outdoor temps were around 110F and the pool was over 90F. It was quite unpleasant and definitely not refreshing.

Your body can evaporatively cool in hot weather as long as it's dry out and the humidity (and hence wet bulb temperature) is low enough. In a pool, there's no evaporative cooling, and your skin surface will be the same temperature as the water. If it's too hot, it's too hot.

brucethemoose22• 3 years ago

That was in a somewhat enclosed bay (Manatee Bay), and the ocean temperature was an anomaly compared to the surrounding buoys.

Not that the rest of the ocean wasn't boiling hot at that time!

RetroTechie• 3 years ago

Was out on a boat this summer, on a hot day with moist air.

Normally (in summer) it's cooler out on the water. But on that day I had a kind of 'choking' feeling even on the middle of a lake. Like being in an elevator or bus packed with people & not enough ventilation.

It was easy enough to take a swim to cool down. But for these dolphins? The water not cooling them down. Swimming at all would raise their body temperature.

Out in the ocean they could have dived to deeper (cooler) waters. Or swim to cooler areas. But in the lake/river they were in? No escape from the hot water.

One can only imagine how desperate they must have felt right before they died.

thelittleone3• 3 years ago

Why would perspiration not be possible? Humans can perspire when swimming [1]. Though it's effectiveness may be diminished.

https://www.a3performance.com/blogs/a3-performance/do-you-sw...

wirrbel• 3 years ago

Without evaporation sweat cannot cool

ceejayoz2• 3 years ago

Perspiration is only useful via evaporative cooling. It is of no use underwater.

tornato7• 3 years ago

People don't swim in the Amazon river, there's lots of other things in there that will kill you!

Edit: to clarify, in the areas of the Amazon that I've been to (maybe the more remote areas), nobody swam. Most of the locals didn't even know how to swim despite living on the river. It may be different in other areas.

pentamassiv• 3 years ago

Of course people swim in the Amazon. I did it myself and you can find plenty of videos of people swimming in it and enjoying the river.

marcosdumay2• 3 years ago

I wonder what you think all those lethal things are.

fdgjgbdfhgb• 3 years ago

Swimming in the river (with the dolphins!) is a very popular tourist attraction in the Amazon, actually. Just don't pee in the water![1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candiru_(fish)#Modern_cases

euroderf• 3 years ago

Or if not kill you, certainly spoil your day. Candiru.

brucethemoose22• 3 years ago

Its not even summer in Brazil yet! They're just coming out of winter, right?

Are there any Brazilians on HN?

goenning• 3 years ago

Yes, but there is no winter on that region, it’s always 30+

https://weatherspark.com/y/28814/Average-Weather-in-Manaus-B...

cesarb2• 3 years ago

Its not even summer in Brazil yet! They're just coming out of winter, right?
Are there any Brazilians on HN?

Of course!

As the sibling comment indicated, the region in question is near the equator, where the "winter" versus "summer" distinction is less relevant (though AFAIK it does have "wet" versus "dry" seasons).

I live much further south (this country is huge), where seasons are more relevant, and around here we're leaving an abnormal winter; last week we had summer-like temperatures, to the point that we broke the previous record in both country-wide and region-wide electricity consumption (due to all the cooling loads, hot days always consume more electricity compared to cold days).

orwin• 3 years ago

I have friends living in French Guyana (both work for the space program), they told me the two seasons were rather 'wet' and 'very wet' there.

marcosdumay2• 3 years ago

This doesn't matter much on the Amazon.

I live a few thousands of kilometers south from it, it is still doesn't matter a lot here. Brazil is passing through an abnormally hot season, but those come from chaotic reasons that can happen on any time at all.

Around here the summer tends to be hotter than the winter, but it's a slightly biased coin-toss. At the Amazon, it's much more random (slightly biased into being the hottest at the fall).

virgulino• 3 years ago

Winter ended on October 23 here in Brazil. Two days later, Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, recorded the hottest day in history. 38.6oC, 101oF. The hottest day since 1910. It wasn't the hottest day of September or spring. It was the hottest day in recorded history. Hotter than the summer record.

I'm in the far south of Brazil. Known for its cold. Brazilians come here to feel the cold, to do cold weather tourism. This entire winter has been absolutely bonkers. Heat wave after heat wave.

https://www.vox.com/climate/23864998/heat-wave-south-america...

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/25/americas/extreme-heat-sou...

And it's not just the heat. It's the crazy swings.

There are people here who are hearing the word "cyclone" for the very first time. And dying in the process. While it was still winter. The town of Muçum is no more. Cyclones were thought to be impossible in the South Atlantic until recently.

https://www.todayonline.com/world/least-39-dead-cyclone-hits...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_tropical_cyclon...

I know very little about the climate of the Amazon. I know that it's such a vast system that it has its own climate rules. We are only just beginning to understand how it works. But we have already discovered in recent years that the Amazon rainforest has a direct and gigantic impact on the climate and rainfall of the rest of Brazil.

And the lake where the dolphins died is deep in the heart of the Amazon. The entire state has declared a state of emergency because of the drought.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/3%C2%B019%2719.9%22S+64%C2...

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/09/29/b...

I'm worried about what kind of hell it's going to be like here in the summer.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/26/brazil-tempera...

victornomad• 3 years ago

this sounds quite sad.

I'm also experiencing the hottest 1st October I had in my life, around 27° C. Everybody is outside in t-shirt when the usual thing is to wear a jacket in 15-18° C...

It is quite scary :/

vuln• 3 years ago

How old are you? It helps knowing due to your phrasing of _in my life_. Also geographic region is a helpful indicator.

mschuster912• 3 years ago

They may be German, it's the literal translation of how one would say it in Germany, and we're still having a heatwave - the Oktoberfest vendors are happy AF, but it's far from normal.

withinboredom2• 3 years ago

For everyone on earth, it's the hottest October of their lives ...

ajuc• 3 years ago

Dunno where he is from, but it's the same here in Poland. In 90s when I was a kid September was usually around 10-15 C, you wear autumn clothing and it rains a lot. October was often when the first snow happened. This year it's been around 25 C for the whole month, it barely rained, it's like summer never ended.

And for like 10 years we had very little or no snow in October-December. For the last few years first snow happens for 1-2 weeks in March/April or even May (!) and it's also the last snow. In 90s snow usually lasted for a few months between December-February.

It's not only that the weather gets hotter but the seasons are also delayed by around 1-2 months relative to where they should be...

RyanAdamas• 3 years ago

CNN reporting is the absolute worst, crap reporting out there.

"It’s still early to determine the cause of this extreme event but according to our experts, it is certainly connected to the drought period and high temperatures in Lake Tefé, in which some points are exceeding 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit),” the institute said in comments carried by CNN affiliate CNN Brasil."

It's the drought and that is causing the temperature of the water to increase, too, not just the "global warming" bearing down on a roaring Amazon, slaying dolphins left and right.

Yellow journalism at its finest.

rthomas6• 3 years ago

What is causing the drought?

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

Perturbations in regional weather cycles, made statistically more common by climate change.

ForestCritter• 3 years ago

The devastation of the rainforests. No rainforest= no rain

deeviant• 3 years ago

Literally the first paragraph seems to spell out everything quite clearly, so your entire comment is a straw man.

I would be very careful with your outlook on consuming news, with the amount of bias displayed in your comment, is very obvious your filter will remove a significant amount of factual information from your understanding, drastically reducing the quality and quantity of information available to you.

jabradoodle• 3 years ago

The article doesn't blame global warming directly and does mention the drought.

What is your problem?

pvaldes• 3 years ago

This is the problem with the trawls

More than 100 dolphins dead in Amazon as water hits 102 degrees Fahrenheit

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