Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Aurora do Tocantins fire, 11 October 2022 Taguatinga, Luís Eduardo Magalhães, Aurora do Tocantins

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2022, 04:22 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2022 in Aurora do Tocantins, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,654 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 44th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1243 with a page). Number 26 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Taguatinga · 2017São Desidério · 2018Taguatinga · 2017Taguatinga · 2021

Burnt area
23,654ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
11 Oct 2022 – 21 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
11 Oct
2022
Heat detections
809
in a single hotspot: 636 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct21 Oct
21 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2022 · 16 MW · 2 12 Oct 2022 · 4,422 MW · 109 13 Oct 2022 · 585 MW · 61 14 Oct 2022 · 920 MW · 62 15 Oct 2022 · 1,188 MW · 99 16 Oct 2022 · 2,342 MW · 176 17 Oct 2022 · 1,108 MW · 132 18 Oct 2022 · 280 MW · 40 19 Oct 2022 · 584 MW · 71 20 Oct 2022 · 889 MW · 49 21 Oct 2022 · 11 MW · 8
11 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 21 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
53km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.4 mm on 23 Oct.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 774 ha in 2016, 6,961 ha in 2017, 5,891 ha in 2018, 42 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (237 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. Taguatinga 14,011 inhabitants
    9,037 ha reached on 13 Oct
    3.8 %
  2. Luís Eduardo Magalhães 107,909 inhabitants
    7,033 ha reached on 12 Oct
    1.7 %
  3. Aurora do Tocantins 3,342 inhabitants where it started
    5,740 ha reached on 11 Oct
    8.2 %
  4. São Desidério 32,828 inhabitants
    1,996 ha reached on 13 Oct
    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 2020
Built-up area2.0 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of built-up land and about 80 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)
11 Oct 33.8 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Oct 33.7 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Oct 33.2 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Oct 34.1 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Oct 33.1 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
16 Oct 33.0 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Oct 32.7 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Oct 34.3 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Oct 34.8 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Oct 34.6 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Oct 33.7 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Oct after 31.9 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Oct after 29.8 °C 43 % 31 km/h 6.4 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Oct 2022
After · 28 Oct 2022

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 22 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 226 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 90: 6.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak226 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10324 µg/m³
Optical depth1.66
1011121314151617181920212223
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 · 809Every 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 Aurora do Tocantins fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 October 2022 to 21 October 2022 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 October 2022 to 20 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 23,654 hectares (236.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Taguatinga (9,037 ha, 3.8 %); Luís Eduardo Magalhães (7,033 ha, 1.7 %); Aurora do Tocantins (5,740 ha, 8.2 %); São Desidério (1,996 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 October 2022 → 21 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 12 October 2022 → 11 October 2022.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 October 2022 to 20 October 2022. 809 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.