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Apiacás fire, 31 August 2024 Apiacás

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2024, 17:22 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2024 in Apiacás, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,390 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1725th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 1111 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

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Suggestions: Apiacás · 2024

Burnt area
3,390ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
31 Aug 2024 – 12 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
31 Aug
2024
Heat detections
147
in a single hotspot: 76 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
64MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug12 Sept
12 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2024 · 16 MW · 5 1 Sept 2024 · 70 MW · 9 2 Sept 2024 · 95 MW · 5 3 Sept 2024 · 25 MW · 6 4 Sept 2024 · 43 MW · 7 5 Sept 2024 · 141 MW · 30 6 Sept 2024 · 87 MW · 28 7 Sept 2024 · 31 MW · 6 8 Sept 2024 · 16 MW · 2 9 Sept 2024 · 183 MW · 8 10 Sept 2024 · 38 MW · 21 11 Sept 2024 · 30 MW · 11 12 Sept 2024 · 51 MW · 9
31 Aug 2 Sept 4 Sept 6 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 12 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

38°high
38km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.9 mm on 27 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 2.1% of the area of London (34 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
    3,413 ha reached on 31 Aug
    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)
25 Aug 34.7 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Aug 31.0 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Aug 34.6 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Aug 36.3 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Aug 32.9 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Aug 35.1 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
31 Aug 36.0 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Sept 37.0 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Sept 36.5 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Sept 33.7 °C 38 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Sept 36.5 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Sept 37.7 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept 35.2 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Sept 33.2 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 36.3 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept 35.4 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Sept 35.0 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Sept 34.6 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Sept 36.0 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Sept after 36.1 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Sept after 34.2 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Sept after 33.8 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Sept after 34.3 °C 38 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Sept after 36.2 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Sept after 34.7 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Sept after 33.7 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Sept after 36.4 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept after 36.1 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Sept after 35.1 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Sept after 35.5 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.9 mm High 31
24 Sept after 34.1 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Sept after 34.7 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
26 Sept after 33.5 °C 42 % 25 km/h 0.8 mm High 23
27 Sept after 30.8 °C 58 % 29 km/h 7.9 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2024
After · 19 Sept 2024

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 2024 the air beside the fire reached 191 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 155: 10 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak191 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10276 µg/m³
Optical depth4.56
293031123456789101112131415
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 · 147Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 August 2024 and 12 September 2024: 13 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 3,390 hectares (33.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Apiacás (3,413 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 38 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 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. 147 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.