Altamira fire, 4 September 2023 Altamira, São Félix do Xingu
The fire started on 4 September 2023 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,670 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 369th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1101 with a page). Number 104 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,670ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 4 Sept 2023 – 19 Sept 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Sept
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 507
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 254MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.4 mm on 28 Sept.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 627 ha in 2016, 1,874 ha in 2017, 1,070 ha in 2018, 3,907 ha in 2019, 5,831 ha in 2020, 3,030 ha in 2021, 2,553 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,306 ha that had burned before.
- 4,009 ha São Félix do Xingu fire, July 2020 38,634 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,168 ha Altamira fire, July 2017 3,021 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 941 ha Altamira fire, July 2019 7,363 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 245 ha Altamira fire, August 2021 18,387 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
5,159 ha0.0 %
-
São Félix do Xingu 65,418 inhabitants1,552 ha0.0 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 hectares of 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Sept | 35.3 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 5 Sept | 35.4 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Sept | 35.1 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Sept | 32.5 °C | 48 % | 31 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 26 |
| 8 Sept | 35.2 °C | 37 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Sept | 35.0 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Sept | 35.7 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 11 Sept | 34.9 °C | 37 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 12 Sept | 34.5 °C | 38 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 13 Sept | 35.5 °C | 36 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Sept | 36.0 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Sept | 36.2 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Sept | 35.5 °C | 41 % | 32 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Sept | 34.6 °C | 45 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Sept | 34.1 °C | 43 % | 29 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 19 Sept | 34.8 °C | 39 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 20 Sept after | 34.2 °C | 40 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 21 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 41 % | 26 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 28 |
| 22 Sept after | 33.1 °C | 53 % | 34 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 24 |
| 23 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 46 % | 29 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 24 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 41 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 25 Sept after | 36.7 °C | 39 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 26 Sept after | 36.0 °C | 44 % | 24 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 27 |
| 27 Sept after | 35.0 °C | 44 % | 23 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 28 |
| 28 Sept after | 28.5 °C | 71 % | 25 km/h | 12.4 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 14 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 126 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 68: 4.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,000 haAltamira1 September 2024 · 22 days · 6 km away
- 38,634 haSão Félix do Xingu23 July 2020 · 36 days · 14 km away
- 18,387 haAltamira6 August 2021 · 8 days · 14 km away
- 17,088 haSão Félix do Xingu4 August 2021 · 17 days · 18 km away
- 20,821 haSão Félix do Xingu6 August 2024 · 40 days · 20 km away
- 28,670 haSão Félix do Xingu5 August 2023 · 31 days · 21 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Altamira fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 September 2023 and 19 September 2023: 16 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 6,670 hectares (66.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Altamira (5,159 ha, 0.0 %); São Félix do Xingu (1,552 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 28 August 2023 → 4 September 2023.
- Start date: 4 September 2023 → 28 August 2023.
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
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. No 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.
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.