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Aripuanã fire, 25 August 2020 Aripuanã

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2020, 17:21 UTC

The fire started on 25 August 2020 in Aripuanã, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,170 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 461th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 199 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aripuanã · 2019Aripuanã · 2018Aripuanã · 2022Aripuanã · 2024

Burnt area
10,170ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
25 Aug 2020 – 17 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Aug
2020
Heat detections
742
in a single hotspot: 320 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
365MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Aug17 Sept
17 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

25 Aug 2020 · 94 MW · 7 26 Aug 2020 · 11 MW · 5 27 Aug 2020 · 73 MW · 11 28 Aug 2020 · 88 MW · 4 30 Aug 2020 · 133 MW · 21 31 Aug 2020 · 80 MW · 37 1 Sept 2020 · 47 MW · 5 2 Sept 2020 · 5 MW · 1 3 Sept 2020 · 56 MW · 3 4 Sept 2020 · 81 MW · 13 5 Sept 2020 · 970 MW · 46 6 Sept 2020 · 1,976 MW · 141 7 Sept 2020 · 2,261 MW · 114 8 Sept 2020 · 669 MW · 108 9 Sept 2020 · 240 MW · 68 10 Sept 2020 · 163 MW · 40 11 Sept 2020 · 321 MW · 24 12 Sept 2020 · 821 MW · 35 13 Sept 2020 · 173 MW · 19 14 Sept 2020 · 69 MW · 20 15 Sept 2020 · 40 MW · 15 16 Sept 2020 · 13 MW · 4 17 Sept 2020 · 4 MW · 1
25 Aug 30 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept 11 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

39°high
38km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.7 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 825 ha in 2016, 2,395 ha in 2017, 2,309 ha in 2018, 2,603 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,280 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (102 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. Aripuanã 25,766 inhabitants where it started
    10,239 ha reached on 25 Aug
    0.4 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.49 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.49 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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 34.1 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Aug 34.4 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Aug 36.0 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Aug 35.6 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Aug 34.2 °C 43 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Aug 36.2 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Aug 36.6 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Sept 37.2 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Sept 36.6 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Sept 37.2 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Sept 36.4 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Sept 37.8 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept 37.2 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Sept 38.8 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Sept 38.8 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Sept 36.3 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Sept 37.1 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept 35.4 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 33.9 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Sept 37.7 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Sept 36.7 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Sept 37.7 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 35.6 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Sept 35.9 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept after 35.1 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Sept after 35.8 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
20 Sept after 30.1 °C 65 % 22 km/h 4.7 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Aug 2020
After · 24 Sept 2020

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 · 742Every 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 Aripuanã fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 August 2020 to 17 September 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2020 to 16 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,170 hectares (101.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aripuanã (10,239 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 September 2020 → 17 September 2020.
  2. Start date: 1 September 2020 → 25 August 2020.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2020 to 16 September 2020. 742 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 2020, 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.