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Altamira fire, 3 September 2017 Altamira

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2017, 17:34 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2017 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,817 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 191th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1096 with a page). Number 146 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Altamira · 2024Altamira · 2024Altamira · 2022Altamira · 2019

Burnt area
11,817ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
3 Sept 2017 – 19 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2017
Heat detections
696
in a single hotspot: 311 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
787MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

19 Sept 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept19 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2017 · 346 MW · 16 4 Sept 2017 · 763 MW · 40 5 Sept 2017 · 2,352 MW · 90 6 Sept 2017 · 534 MW · 52 7 Sept 2017 · 79 MW · 21 8 Sept 2017 · 657 MW · 44 9 Sept 2017 · 49 MW · 20 10 Sept 2017 · 215 MW · 20 11 Sept 2017 · 3,239 MW · 66 12 Sept 2017 · 2,891 MW · 71 13 Sept 2017 · 459 MW · 79 14 Sept 2017 · 250 MW · 40 15 Sept 2017 · 513 MW · 38 16 Sept 2017 · 669 MW · 30 17 Sept 2017 · 32 MW · 21 18 Sept 2017 · 121 MW · 16 19 Sept 2017 · 206 MW · 32
3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 18 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high
43km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 26 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.5% of the area of London (118 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Altamira 126,279 inhabitants where it started
    11,967 ha reached on 3 Sept
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
3 Sept 35.5 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Sept 34.0 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Sept 34.5 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Sept 35.2 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept 35.4 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Sept 35.5 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept 35.0 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 35.9 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 36.3 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Sept 36.5 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept 35.1 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Sept 34.9 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Sept 34.4 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Sept 36.8 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
17 Sept 34.1 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept 35.3 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Sept 35.2 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Sept after 34.2 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Sept after 28.9 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Sept after 34.7 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Sept after 34.1 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept after 34.6 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Sept after 34.5 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Sept after 33.7 °C 40 % 22 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 27 Aug 2017
After · 26 Sept 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 696Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Altamira fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2017 and 19 September 2017: 17 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,817 hectares (118.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Altamira (11,967 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Brazil (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 193

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 193.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 696 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.