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Arame fire, 3 September 2017 Arame, Amarante do Maranhão

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2017, 16:57 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2017 in Arame, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,709 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 61th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 181 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Amarante do Maranhão · 2016Arame · 2016Arame · 2017Amarante do Maranhão · 2017

Burnt area
9,709ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
3 Sept 2017 – 20 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2017
Heat detections
592
in a single hotspot: 264 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
415MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept20 Sept
21 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2017 · 147 MW · 14 4 Sept 2017 · 254 MW · 30 5 Sept 2017 · 123 MW · 24 6 Sept 2017 · 134 MW · 12 8 Sept 2017 · 6 MW · 1 9 Sept 2017 · 287 MW · 14 10 Sept 2017 · 1,042 MW · 73 11 Sept 2017 · 985 MW · 89 12 Sept 2017 · 1,396 MW · 113 13 Sept 2017 · 7 MW · 3 14 Sept 2017 · 80 MW · 10 15 Sept 2017 · 603 MW · 42 16 Sept 2017 · 1,788 MW · 58 17 Sept 2017 · 462 MW · 29 18 Sept 2017 · 84 MW · 5 19 Sept 2017 · 54 MW · 7 20 Sept 2017 · 4 MW · 3 21 Sept 2017 · 19 MW · 5
3 Sept 6 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 19 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
48km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,763 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (97 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. Arame 25,517 inhabitants where it started
    9,078 ha reached on 27 Aug
    3.0 %
  2. Amarante do Maranhão 37,085 inhabitants
    698 ha reached on 16 Sept
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
27 Aug 33.4 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Aug 34.0 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Aug 33.6 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Aug 34.6 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Aug 35.0 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Sept 33.5 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
2 Sept 33.6 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
3 Sept 33.8 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Sept 33.5 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Sept 33.0 °C 40 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Sept 33.9 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Sept 33.9 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Sept 34.8 °C 39 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept 34.1 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Sept 34.8 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Sept 34.3 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Sept 34.8 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 Sept 33.4 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Sept 34.6 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Sept 34.4 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept 34.3 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Sept 34.4 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept 34.4 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Sept 35.1 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Sept 34.8 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept after 35.0 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Sept after 34.9 °C 36 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Sept after 34.9 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Sept after 34.7 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Sept after 33.3 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Sept after 35.7 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Sept after 35.2 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Sept after 35.8 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Sept after 36.0 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Sept after 34.5 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Oct after 35.3 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Oct after 34.9 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Oct after 35.8 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Oct after 36.2 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
5 Oct after 35.4 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Oct after 35.8 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Oct after 34.5 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2017
After · 27 Sept 2017

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 · 592Every 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 Arame fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2017 and 20 September 2017: 18 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 9,709 hectares (97.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Arame (9,078 ha, 3.0 %); Amarante do Maranhão (698 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

Satellite cross-check

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. 592 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.

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.