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Apiacás fire, September 2023 Apiacás

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2023, 17:10 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2023 in Apiacás, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,054 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1065th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 171 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Apiacás · 2021Apiacás · 2019Apiacás · 2024Apiacás · 2024

Burnt area
5,054ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
2 Sept 2023 – 16 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Sept
2023
Heat detections
405
in a single hotspot: 183 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
306MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept16 Sept
16 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2023 · 28 MW · 3 5 Sept 2023 · 21 MW · 7 6 Sept 2023 · 93 MW · 15 8 Sept 2023 · 126 MW · 38 9 Sept 2023 · 324 MW · 27 10 Sept 2023 · 1,959 MW · 107 11 Sept 2023 · 445 MW · 67 12 Sept 2023 · 158 MW · 56 13 Sept 2023 · 109 MW · 23 14 Sept 2023 · 124 MW · 31 15 Sept 2023 · 132 MW · 22 16 Sept 2023 · 153 MW · 9
4 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 13 Sept 15 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

36°high
37km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 26 Sept.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 494 ha in 2017, 1,046 ha in 2018, 1,400 ha in 2019, 2,145 ha in 2020, 4,441 ha in 2021, 1,442 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,926 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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. Apiacás 8,590 inhabitants where it started
    5,094 ha reached on 4 Sept
    0.2 %

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)
2 Sept 33.8 °C 45 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
3 Sept 35.3 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
4 Sept 35.7 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Sept 36.3 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Sept 34.5 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
7 Sept 34.2 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Sept 31.9 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
9 Sept 35.3 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
10 Sept 36.1 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Sept 36.0 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Sept 33.6 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
13 Sept 35.9 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
14 Sept 32.8 °C 49 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
15 Sept 35.4 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
16 Sept 35.3 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Sept after 31.0 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
18 Sept after 34.1 °C 43 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
19 Sept after 34.8 °C 43 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Sept after 34.8 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
21 Sept after 34.6 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
22 Sept after 35.1 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
23 Sept after 34.5 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
24 Sept after 34.2 °C 44 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
25 Sept after 35.5 °C 42 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Sept after 34.8 °C 48 % 28 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2023
After · 23 Sept 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 7 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 63 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak63 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM1091 µg/m³
Optical depth1.16
678910111213141516171819
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 · 405Every 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 Apiacás fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 September 2023 to 16 September 2023 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2023 to 16 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,054 hectares (50.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Apiacás (5,094 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 8 September 2023 → 2 September 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 8 September 2023 to 16 September 2023. 405 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.