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Altamira fire, 14 July 2023 Altamira

Out · last detection 22 Jul 2023, 16:20 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2023 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,066 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1070th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1101 with a page). Number 413 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Altamira · 2021Altamira · 2020Altamira · 2022Novo Progresso · 2024

Burnt area
3,066ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
14 Jul 2023 – 22 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Jul
2023
Heat detections
310
in a single hotspot: 117 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
389MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul22 Jul
22 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jul 2023 · 205 MW · 17 15 Jul 2023 · 137 MW · 45 16 Jul 2023 · 10 MW · 3 17 Jul 2023 · 2 MW · 1 18 Jul 2023 · 988 MW · 17 19 Jul 2023 · 1,664 MW · 154 20 Jul 2023 · 449 MW · 65 21 Jul 2023 · 31 MW · 7 22 Jul 2023 · 12 MW · 1
14 Jul 16 Jul 18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 22 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
38km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 602 ha in 2019, 3,552 ha in 2020, 3,392 ha in 2021, 1,099 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,084 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 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
    3,097 ha reached on 14 Jul
    0.0 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
14 Jul 33.4 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Jul 33.9 °C 41 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Jul 34.2 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Jul 34.9 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jul 35.5 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jul 35.6 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Jul 35.5 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Jul 34.0 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Jul 33.2 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Jul after 34.2 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Jul after 34.6 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jul after 34.4 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jul after 35.0 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Jul after 35.6 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul after 35.8 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul after 36.3 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Jul after 36.3 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul after 36.1 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Aug after 35.1 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2023
After · 29 Jul 2023

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 20 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 71 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak71 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10101 µg/m³
Optical depth0.56
12131415161718192021222324
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 310Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 July 2023 to 22 July 2023 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 July 2023 to 21 July 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,066 hectares (30.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Altamira (3,097 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 July 2023 → 22 July 2023.

RSS Changes to this page

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 July 2023 to 21 July 2023. 310 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.