Conspiracy theorist attributes floods in Brazil to false ‘magnetic shift’ claim

The same blue checking account, which has more than 70,000 followers, spread similar theories about extreme weather events in widely shared posts.

Approximately 400 cities and towns in the state of Rio Grande do Sul were affected by heavy rains.

Experts attribute the historic flood to climate change, exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon, which can naturally affect precipitation levels (archived here and here ).

Following the floods, there has been a surge in related conspiracy theories in the country, some of which AFP has debunked in Portuguese.

But experts told AFP that there was no connection between magnetic poles and climate change, while scientists in Brazil had been studying the impact of anthropogenic warming on precipitation for decades.

It goes against the principles of physics

“There is no scientific evidence linking global warming to shifts in magnetic poles or a decrease in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field,” said British Antarctic Survey (BAS) space weather independent researcher Ingrid Cnossen (archived here ). the atmosphere team told AFP on May 14.

A spokesperson for NASA’s Langley Research Center (archived here) told AFP on May 13 that there was “no connection between the movement of our magnetic poles and climate” and pointed to an article on NASA’s website (archived here) that refutes the theory.

The movement of liquid iron and nickel buried deep beneath the Earth’s surface creates its magnetic field (archived here ) – this movement is what causes our planet’s magnetic poles to shift (archived here ), eventually changing positions completely. approximately every 300,000 years. Animals that rely on the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate, such as birds or sea turtles, may become temporarily disoriented due to this change.

“While this may seem like a big deal, polar reversals are common in Earth’s geological history,” NASA writes in its blog post, and contrary to what “doomsday” scenarios often imply, there is no evidence of major changes or species extinctions.

The space agency adds that change doesn’t happen overnight, but over hundreds or thousands of years.

According to NASA, there is no evidence that our climate has been significantly affected by previous magnetic field excursions in at least the last 2.8 million years.

Additionally, NASA scientists note that there is no known physical mechanism that can couple weather conditions on the Earth’s surface (such as atmospheric conditions) with the electromagnetic currents responsible for the polarity reversal.

Carlos Nobre, head of Brazil’s National Institute of Science and Technology on Climate Change (INCT) (archived here ), listed what scientists believe was behind the recent catastrophic rainfalls: The low-pressure system was blocked by the high-pressure system. Water vapor from the Amazon contributed to historic downpours, while the country’s midwest and southeast caused cold fronts to linger in the region.

Speaking to AFP for a previous news report, Nobre stated that global warming was making the situation worse, adding that “a warmer atmosphere can store much more water vapor, which can trigger more frequent and intense rainfall events that lead to disasters like this.”

Convergence with climate models

Lincoln Muniz Alves (archived here), climate scientist Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais) and the lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agree. “The tragedy in southern Brazil has a deep-rooted cause and consensus among climate experts,” he said.

The broader impacts of these weather events depend on global climate change, he told AFP on May 9.

“The increasing severity and frequency of such events is likely linked to the planet’s rising temperatures, but further attribution studies are required to confirm this,” he added.

Weather modeling researcher and IPCC lead author Chou Sin Chan (archived here) told AFP on May 10: “projections of future climate by global and regional climate models showed, with high confidence, an increase in precipitation.” “In the south of Brazil, in Uruguay and in the north of Argentina.”

The IPCC had also noted in previous reports (archived here and here ) “significant increases in precipitation” observed in the region in the past.

João Paulo Brêda, an environmental engineer specializing in large-scale hydrology (archived here), told AFP on May 9 that “the extraordinary event that is happening now is getting closer to the predictions of climate models.”

AFP debunked other claims about extreme weather events in other regions and their ties to climate science here and here .