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Boca do Acre fire, 28 August 2022 Boca do Acre

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2022, 17:10 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2022 in Boca do Acre, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,345 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 372th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 568 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Boca do Acre · 2024Boca do Acre · 2024Boca do Acre · 2021

Burnt area
3,345ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
28 Aug 2022 – 14 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 Aug
2022
Heat detections
139
in a single hotspot: 242 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
465MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug14 Sept
13 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2022 · 4 MW · 1 1 Sept 2022 · 34 MW · 1 2 Sept 2022 · 141 MW · 10 3 Sept 2022 · 2 MW · 1 4 Sept 2022 · 811 MW · 19 5 Sept 2022 · 3,916 MW · 52 6 Sept 2022 · 178 MW · 50 8 Sept 2022 · 6 MW · 2 9 Sept 2022 · 8 MW · 1 12 Sept 2022 · 8 MW · 1 13 Sept 2022 · 4 MW · 1
31 Aug 2 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 13 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

37°high
38km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.0 mm on 15 Sept.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 206 ha in 2016, 1,140 ha in 2018, 739 ha in 2019, 1,368 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,578 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Boca do Acre 35,447 inhabitants where it started
    3,370 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.2 %

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.

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)
31 Aug 34.1 °C 36 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
1 Sept 35.5 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
2 Sept 36.6 °C 30 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
3 Sept 34.5 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Sept 33.1 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Sept 33.6 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Sept 35.0 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept 35.5 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Sept 35.8 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
9 Sept 35.9 °C 42 % 26 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20
10 Sept 35.9 °C 43 % 23 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 16
11 Sept 28.0 °C 71 % 19 km/h 11.4 mm Very low 0
12 Sept 33.5 °C 47 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Low 6
13 Sept 35.9 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
14 Sept 35.4 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 18
15 Sept after 26.1 °C 56 % 45 km/h 5.0 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2022
After · 21 Sept 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 7 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 641 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 422: 28 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak641 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10916 µg/m³
Optical depth2.54
31123456789101112
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 · 139Every 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 Boca do Acre fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 August 2022 to 14 September 2022 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2022 to 9 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,345 hectares (33.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Boca do Acre (3,370 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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: 9 September 2022 → 14 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 2 September 2022 → 28 August 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 2 September 2022 to 9 September 2022. 139 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.