This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of President Post-doctoral fellowship Program (NRF-2013R1A6A3A060443). L. De Los Santos Valladares thanks the Incorporacion de Investigadores Program from the CONCYTEC - World Bank - UNMSM (Contrat No. 12 -2019 - FONDECYT - BM - INC. INV.) for supporting his research at the University of San Marcos, Peru.

The prevailing wet climate in the western Amazon is not favorable to the natural occurrence of fires. Nevertheless, the current process of clearing of humid forests for agriculture and cattle ranching has increased the vulnerability of the region to the spread of fires. Using meteorological stations precipitation and the Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Active-Fires (AF) during 2000-2009, we show that fire anomalies vary closely with July-August-September (JAS) precipitation variability as measured by the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The precipitation variability is, in turn, greatly determined by sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the North Tropical Atlantic (NTA). We develop a linear regression model to relate local fire activity to an index of the NTA-SST. By using seasonal forecasts of SST from a coupled model, we are able to predict anomalous JAS fire...