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Aracati fire, September 2025 Aracati, Itaiçaba

Out · last detection 4 Oct 2025, 16:29 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2025 in Aracati, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,809 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Ceará since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 269 in Brazil in 2025, of 714.

Compare with…
Burnt area
5,809ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
13 Sept 2025 – 4 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
13 Sept
2025
Heat detections
247
in a single hotspot: 230 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
431MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept4 Oct
4 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

13 Sept 2025 · 2 MW · 1 14 Sept 2025 · 97 MW · 3 15 Sept 2025 · 142 MW · 7 16 Sept 2025 · 1,444 MW · 22 19 Sept 2025 · 2,343 MW · 57 20 Sept 2025 · 35 MW · 9 21 Sept 2025 · 31 MW · 4 23 Sept 2025 · 2 MW · 1 24 Sept 2025 · 14 MW · 1 25 Sept 2025 · 256 MW · 6 26 Sept 2025 · 514 MW · 13 27 Sept 2025 · 1,103 MW · 28 28 Sept 2025 · 1,130 MW · 48 29 Sept 2025 · 425 MW · 25 30 Sept 2025 · 176 MW · 16 1 Oct 2025 · 5 MW · 1 3 Oct 2025 · 5 MW · 1 4 Oct 2025 · 42 MW · 4
13 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 21 Sept 25 Sept 28 Sept 1 Oct

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
52km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 3.7% of the area of London (58 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. Aracati 75,113 inhabitants where it started
    5,780 ha reached on 13 Sept
    4.7 %
  2. Itaiçaba 7,536 inhabitants
    68 ha
    0.3 %

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 area1.3 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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)
13 Sept 33.3 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Sept 33.7 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Sept 33.9 °C 39 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Sept 34.2 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Sept 33.5 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept 34.0 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Sept 35.0 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Sept 33.2 °C 42 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Sept 32.8 °C 45 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
22 Sept 32.9 °C 43 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept 32.3 °C 46 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Sept 33.9 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Sept 34.0 °C 34 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Sept 34.6 °C 30 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Sept 34.5 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Sept 35.0 °C 27 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Sept 34.9 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Sept 34.5 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Oct 33.6 °C 42 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Oct 33.9 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Oct 34.2 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Oct 34.0 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Oct after 34.0 °C 36 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Oct after 34.2 °C 35 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Oct after 34.0 °C 41 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Oct after 32.5 °C 44 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
9 Oct after 34.0 °C 39 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Oct after 34.5 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Oct after 34.4 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Oct after 33.5 °C 41 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46
13 Oct after 34.0 °C 39 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Oct after 33.0 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Sept 2025
After · 11 Oct 2025

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 30 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1016 µg/m³
Optical depth0.33
11121314151617181920212223242526272829301234567
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 · 247Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aracati fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 September 2025 and 4 October 2025: 22 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 5,809 hectares (58.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aracati (5,780 ha, 4.7 %); Itaiçaba (68 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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. 247 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.