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Aparecida do Rio Negro fire, September 2016 Aparecida do Rio Negro

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2016, 16:56 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2016 in Aparecida do Rio Negro, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,562 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 687th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1243 with a page). Number 333 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Palmas · 2022Palmas · 2025Miracema do Tocantins · 2024Tocantínia · 2019

Burnt area
4,562ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
9 Sept 2016 – 18 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Sept
2016
Heat detections
169
in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
98MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept18 Sept
18 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2016 · 64 MW · 2 10 Sept 2016 · 190 MW · 20 11 Sept 2016 · 196 MW · 40 12 Sept 2016 · 154 MW · 55 13 Sept 2016 · 48 MW · 17 14 Sept 2016 · 5 MW · 3 15 Sept 2016 · 156 MW · 10 17 Sept 2016 · 26 MW · 12 18 Sept 2016 · 44 MW · 10
9 Sept 11 Sept 13 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
48km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.3 mm on 22 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 2.9% of the area of London (46 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. Aparecida do Rio Negro 4,856 inhabitants where it started
    4,592 ha reached on 9 Sept
    4.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.58 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.58 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
9 Sept 34.6 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Sept 35.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Sept 35.8 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Sept 35.8 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Sept 35.5 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Sept 35.8 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Sept 37.1 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Sept 35.4 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
17 Sept 35.0 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept 34.6 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Sept after 35.8 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Sept after 34.6 °C 29 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Sept after 35.8 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept after 33.5 °C 43 % 29 km/h 6.3 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2016
After · 25 Sept 2016

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 · 169Every 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 Aparecida do Rio Negro fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2016 and 18 September 2016: 10 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 4,562 hectares (45.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aparecida do Rio Negro (4,592 ha, 4.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 169 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 2015, 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.