‘There’s no way to sleep’: life in a Brazilian city with 212 days of extreme heat
In Belém, so-called climate inequality – that is, how the climate affects different social groups in different ways – can be felt just steps from us.
According to 2022 IBGE census data, the city, located in the middle of the forest, is the sixth capital of Brazil with the highest number of people living on streets without a single tree, which may seem absurd to those who travel to the central and wealthy areas of the capital of Pará, with its watering tunnels and shaded sidewalks.
In the Jurunas neighborhood, Belém’s extremely wooded neighbor, Ronald Monteiro, 15, says the heat since 11:30 a.m. hits like “an açaí mixing machine.”
“It’s fast, it revolves around us.”
When he comes home from school late in the morning, Ronald usually helps his father in extracting açaí pulp, a staple of Pará lunches, on a treeless street.
Then he goes up to his room and tries to rest up for afternoon and evening activities, like soccer, church, or helping his uncle at the neighborhood market. But this was not possible.
“It’s unbearably hot, there’s no way to sleep, there’s no way to rest, we lose our afternoon sleep. The heat takes a lot out of you,” says Ronald.
His feeling is reflected in the numbers.
Data from Cemaden (National Center for Monitoring and Warning of Natural Disasters) indicates that Belém was the Brazilian capital with the highest number of days of “extreme heat” last year: 212 days.
The expression indicates the number of days in the year during which the city experienced a maximum temperature higher than the maximum recorded in previous years. The capital reaches 37.3°C. The only city where more extreme events than Belém took place was Melgaço, on the island of Marajó, also in Pará.
A survey shared with BBC News Brasil by Professor Everaldo de Souza, from the Meteorological and Climate Modeling Laboratory of the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), based on data from Inmet (National Institute of Meteorology), also brings a red light to the city.
This decade, until last year, the capital of Pará experienced 164 days where the maximum temperature was recorded above 35.5ºC, which the professor describes as an extreme heat event.
This means that in four years, Belém has experienced more days of extreme heat than the previous six decades combined.
“We know it’s hot in Belém, but it’s much hotter,” says Souza.
In this video, journalist Vitor Tavares talks about how Belém’s extreme heat affects the lives of the city’s young people.
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