Altamira fire, 29 July 2024 Altamira, Novo Progresso
The fire started on 29 July 2024 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 61 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 70,912 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
- 79,088 haAltamira5 August 2024 · 49 days
- 22,340 haNovo Progresso24 August 2024 · 30 days
- 13,622 haAltamira12 September 2024 · 16 days
- 10,141 haNovo Progresso2 August 2024 · 21 days
- 7,340 haAltamira12 August 2024 · 35 days
- 5,657 haAltamira2 September 2024 · 17 days
- 5,050 haNovo Progresso21 August 2024 · 32 days
- 3,677 haAltamira1 August 2024 · 11 days
It is the 18th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1100 with a page). Number 37 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 70,912ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 61days
- 29 Jul 2024 – 27 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 29 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 7,028
- in a single hotspot: 313 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.0GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.3 mm on 28 Sept.
This area had burned before
71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,625 ha in 2016, 9,038 ha in 2017, 2,833 ha in 2018, 11,451 ha in 2019, 14,227 ha in 2020, 1,497 ha in 2021, 40,550 ha in 2022, 5,045 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 50,105 ha that had burned before.
- 7,701 ha Altamira fire, August 2022 5,558 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,288 ha Novo Progresso fire, August 2022 7,450 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,922 ha Altamira fire, August 2022 5,495 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,060 ha Altamira fire, August 2022 5,823 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,669 ha Altamira fire, August 2019 4,774 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,600 ha Novo Progresso fire, August 2019 4,316 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,232 ha Novo Progresso fire, August 2022 3,254 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 11 ha Altamira fire, August 2022 61,533 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
-
54,804 ha reached on 29 Jul0.3 %
-
Novo Progresso 33,638 inhabitants16,695 ha reached on 2 Aug0.4 %
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 5.0 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Jul | 34.5 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 30 Jul | 35.7 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 31 Jul | 35.0 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 1 Aug | 35.6 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 2 Aug | 34.9 °C | 28 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 3 Aug | 34.3 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 4 Aug | 34.1 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 5 Aug | 34.1 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Aug | 34.2 °C | 27 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 7 Aug | 35.3 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 8 Aug | 36.0 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 9 Aug | 36.2 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 10 Aug | 33.7 °C | 26 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 11 Aug | 35.2 °C | 26 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Aug | 33.5 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 13 Aug | 34.5 °C | 29 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 14 Aug | 34.9 °C | 36 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Aug | 34.4 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 16 Aug | 35.6 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 17 Aug | 36.1 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 18 Aug | 34.5 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Aug | 35.8 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 20 Aug | 35.0 °C | 30 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Aug | 36.3 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Aug | 36.2 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 23 Aug | 36.1 °C | 27 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 24 Aug | 36.5 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 25 Aug | 35.5 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 26 Aug | 33.1 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 27 Aug | 35.6 °C | 28 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Aug | 35.6 °C | 26 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 29 Aug | 34.2 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 30 Aug | 35.3 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 31 Aug | 36.2 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 1 Sept | 36.1 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 2 Sept | 36.8 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Sept | 36.0 °C | 27 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 4 Sept | 36.1 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 5 Sept | 37.9 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 6 Sept | 36.4 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 7 Sept | 36.4 °C | 22 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 8 Sept | 35.0 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 9 Sept | 36.6 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 10 Sept | 36.7 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 11 Sept | 35.8 °C | 29 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Sept | 37.2 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 13 Sept | 35.9 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Sept | 36.2 °C | 27 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Sept | 36.1 °C | 28 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 16 Sept | 34.6 °C | 35 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Sept | 36.1 °C | 28 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 18 Sept | 35.3 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Sept | 35.1 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 20 Sept | 37.0 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Sept | 35.8 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Sept | 35.0 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 23 Sept | 35.9 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 32 |
| 24 Sept | 34.3 °C | 42 % | 24 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 31 |
| 25 Sept | 34.4 °C | 47 % | 25 km/h | 2.4 mm | Low 10 |
| 26 Sept | 34.7 °C | 40 % | 26 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 27 Sept | 33.7 °C | 43 % | 23 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 22 |
| 28 Sept after | 31.8 °C | 56 % | 23 km/h | 7.3 mm | Very low 3 |
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 4 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 836 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 514: 34 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 · 7,028Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,591 haAltamira11 August 2022 · 33 days · 24 km away
- 18,045 haNovo Progresso18 August 2017 · 33 days · 32 km away
- 61,533 haAltamira7 August 2022 · 38 days · 33 km away
- 15,458 haAltamira18 August 2022 · 21 days · 34 km away
- 79,088 haAltamira5 August 2024 · 49 days · 35 km away
- 30,249 haAltamira11 August 2022 · 37 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Altamira fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 July 2024 to 27 September 2024 (61 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 July 2024 to 27 September 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 70,912 hectares (709.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Altamira (54,804 ha, 0.3 %); Novo Progresso (16,695 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.
- Start date: 31 July 2024 → 29 July 2024.
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; 7 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 July 2024 to 27 September 2024. 7,028 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.