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Apuí fire, 30 August 2023 Apuí

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2023, 17:30 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2023 in Apuí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,326 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 108th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 114 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Apuí · 2022Apuí · 2021Apuí · 2020Apuí · 2024

Burnt area
6,326ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
30 Aug 2023 – 15 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 Aug
2023
Heat detections
1,188
in a single hotspot: 274 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug15 Sept
15 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2023 · 265 MW · 14 1 Sept 2023 · 2,365 MW · 119 2 Sept 2023 · 4,652 MW · 139 3 Sept 2023 · 1,427 MW · 165 4 Sept 2023 · 4,638 MW · 235 5 Sept 2023 · 1,408 MW · 203 6 Sept 2023 · 391 MW · 76 7 Sept 2023 · 90 MW · 41 8 Sept 2023 · 205 MW · 14 9 Sept 2023 · 1,131 MW · 70 10 Sept 2023 · 74 MW · 17 11 Sept 2023 · 158 MW · 10 12 Sept 2023 · 143 MW · 18 13 Sept 2023 · 60 MW · 25 14 Sept 2023 · 56 MW · 37 15 Sept 2023 · 22 MW · 5
31 Aug 2 Sept 3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 12 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

38°high
36km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 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: 613 ha in 2019, 1,562 ha in 2020, 4,610 ha in 2021, 3,144 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,519 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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. Apuí 20,647 inhabitants where it started
    6,355 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.1 %

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)
30 Aug 36.4 °C 41 % 24 km/h 5.1 mm Low 7
31 Aug 34.2 °C 50 % 27 km/h 2.6 mm Low 6
1 Sept 35.6 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 17
2 Sept 36.7 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
3 Sept 37.1 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Sept 37.8 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept 37.4 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Sept 37.3 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Sept 36.0 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
8 Sept 34.4 °C 47 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
9 Sept 37.4 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Sept 37.0 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
11 Sept 34.7 °C 46 % 29 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 19
12 Sept 35.2 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
13 Sept 37.0 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
14 Sept 36.1 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
15 Sept 38.1 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Sept after 34.9 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Sept after 32.4 °C 54 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm High 22
18 Sept after 34.8 °C 50 % 30 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 19
19 Sept after 36.5 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Sept after 32.6 °C 51 % 25 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
21 Sept after 35.6 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Sept after 35.3 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
23 Sept after 35.8 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Sept after 37.1 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
25 Sept after 36.4 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2023
After · 22 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 5 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 197 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 96: 6.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak197 µg/m³
Days over the guideline21 days
PM10283 µg/m³
Optical depth1.82
28293031123456789101112131415161718
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 · 1,188Every 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 Apuí fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 August 2023 and 15 September 2023: 17 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 6,326 hectares (63.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Apuí (6,355 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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 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. 1,188 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.