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Amarante do Maranhão fire, 8 September 2020 Amarante do Maranhão

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2020, 17:10 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2020 in Amarante do Maranhão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,088 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 570th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 608 with a page). Number 913 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Amarante do Maranhão · 2016Amarante do Maranhão · 2017Amarante do Maranhão · 2019Amarante do Maranhão · 2017

Burnt area
3,088ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
8 Sept 2020 – 23 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
8 Sept
2020
Heat detections
144
in a single hotspot: 112 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
288MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept23 Sept
23 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

11 Sept 2020 · 158 MW · 11 12 Sept 2020 · 159 MW · 22 13 Sept 2020 · 102 MW · 13 14 Sept 2020 · 713 MW · 38 15 Sept 2020 · 1,133 MW · 43 16 Sept 2020 · 22 MW · 12 20 Sept 2020 · 6 MW · 1 23 Sept 2020 · 14 MW · 4
11 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 20 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

35°high
46km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 996 ha in 2016, 3,163 ha in 2017, 65 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,686 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% 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. Amarante do Maranhão 37,085 inhabitants where it started
    3,108 ha reached on 11 Sept
    0.4 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.22 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.22 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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 33.9 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept 34.5 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Sept 34.1 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 33.8 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 34.5 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Sept 34.6 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Sept 34.6 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Sept 34.3 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 35.0 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Sept 34.0 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Sept 34.3 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Sept 34.3 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 34.0 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept 35.2 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept 34.5 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Sept 34.1 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Sept 33.4 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Sept 33.4 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Sept 33.9 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
23 Sept 35.2 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Sept after 35.0 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Sept after 33.0 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.5 mm High 31
26 Sept after 34.0 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
27 Sept after 34.3 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
28 Sept after 35.5 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Sept after 35.0 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
30 Sept after 34.9 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Oct after 34.8 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
2 Oct after 35.9 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Oct after 35.4 °C 35 % 34 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 · 1 Sept 2020
After · 30 Sept 2020

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 · 144Every 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 Amarante do Maranhão fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2020 to 23 September 2020 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2020 to 16 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,088 hectares (30.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Amarante do Maranhão (3,108 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 September 2020 → 23 September 2020.
  2. Start date: 11 September 2020 → 8 September 2020.

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 11 September 2020 to 16 September 2020. 144 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 2020, 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.