Barra do Garças fire, 28 August 2020 Barra do Garças, Novo São Joaquim
The fire started on 28 August 2020 in Barra do Garças, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,357 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 84th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 38 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 34,357ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 28 Aug 2020 – 18 Sept 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 1,524
- in a single hotspot: 153 MW
- Danger at start
- 60
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 707MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 22 Sept.
This area had burned before
94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 24,568 ha in 2016, 11,723 ha in 2017, 9,367 ha in 2018, 14,764 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 32,145 ha that had burned before.
- 19,216 ha Barra do Garças fire, July 2016 26,485 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,218 ha Barra do Garças fire, August 2018 10,731 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,807 ha Barra do Garças fire, August 2017 6,188 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,621 ha Barra do Garças fire, September 2019 6,344 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,924 ha Barra do Garças fire, August 2019 48,852 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,889 ha Barra do Garças fire, September 2016 14,094 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,149 ha Barra do Garças fire, September 2018 4,867 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 470 ha Barra do Garças fire, August 2017 32,992 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
34,535 ha reached on 28 Aug3.8 %
-
Novo São Joaquim 6,919 inhabitants2 ha reached on 10 Sept0.0 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.31 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Aug | 35.9 °C | 4 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 29 Aug | 36.1 °C | 6 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 30 Aug | 37.0 °C | 8 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 31 Aug | 37.4 °C | 10 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 1 Sept | 36.6 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 2 Sept | 35.4 °C | 10 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 3 Sept | 35.5 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 4 Sept | 35.4 °C | 10 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 5 Sept | 35.7 °C | 9 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 6 Sept | 36.8 °C | 7 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 7 Sept | 37.3 °C | 8 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 8 Sept | 37.9 °C | 10 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Sept | 37.3 °C | 8 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 10 Sept | 37.9 °C | 6 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 11 Sept | 36.9 °C | 7 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 12 Sept | 37.3 °C | 5 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 13 Sept | 36.1 °C | 10 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 14 Sept | 36.2 °C | 11 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 15 Sept | 36.1 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 16 Sept | 36.4 °C | 9 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 17 Sept | 37.5 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 18 Sept | 38.0 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Sept after | 38.7 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 21 Sept after | 35.4 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 44 |
| 22 Sept after | 28.6 °C | 51 % | 26 km/h | 3.2 mm | Low 8 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 1,524Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 44,194 haBarra do Garças16 August 2022 · 24 days · 4 km away
- 26,485 haBarra do Garças26 July 2016 · 20 days · 6 km away
- 77,877 haNovo São Joaquim6 August 2026 · 31 days · 12 km away
- 32,992 haBarra do Garças31 August 2017 · 20 days · 21 km away
- 34,750 haBarra do Garças20 August 2024 · 22 days · 22 km away
- 48,852 haBarra do GarçasAugust 2019 · 32 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Barra do Garças fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 August 2020 to 18 September 2020 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2020 to 13 September 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 34,357 hectares (343.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Barra do Garças (34,535 ha, 3.8 %); Novo São Joaquim (2 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 13 September 2020 → 18 September 2020.
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
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 28 August 2020 to 13 September 2020. 1,524 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.
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.