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Cáceres fire, 7 December 2023 Cáceres

Out · last detection 26 Dec 2023, 04:42 UTC

The fire started on 7 December 2023 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,546 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1211th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 206 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cáceres · 2020Cáceres · 2024Cáceres · 2021Poconé · 2021

Burnt area
4,546ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
7 Dec 2023 – 26 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Dec
2023
Heat detections
379
in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
224MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Dec26 Dec
26 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

7 Dec 2023 · 268 MW · 40 8 Dec 2023 · 322 MW · 24 9 Dec 2023 · 641 MW · 37 10 Dec 2023 · 182 MW · 37 12 Dec 2023 · 188 MW · 14 13 Dec 2023 · 319 MW · 38 14 Dec 2023 · 86 MW · 22 15 Dec 2023 · 95 MW · 10 16 Dec 2023 · 110 MW · 18 17 Dec 2023 · 214 MW · 27 18 Dec 2023 · 658 MW · 27 19 Dec 2023 · 148 MW · 34 20 Dec 2023 · 218 MW · 11 24 Dec 2023 · 9 MW · 3 25 Dec 2023 · 80 MW · 25 26 Dec 2023 · 40 MW · 12
7 Dec 10 Dec 14 Dec 17 Dec 18 Dec 20 Dec 26 Dec

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

40°high
36km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 31 Dec.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,249 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (45 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. Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants where it started
    4,573 ha reached on 7 Dec
    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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
30 Nov 37.2 °C 45 % 30 km/h 2.1 mm Very low 3
1 Dec 35.6 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.5 mm Low 7
2 Dec 36.9 °C 39 % 32 km/h 1.0 mm Low 9
3 Dec 35.0 °C 45 % 34 km/h 1.7 mm Low 5
4 Dec 29.6 °C 67 % 28 km/h 9.4 mm Very low 0
5 Dec 33.1 °C 53 % 25 km/h 5.5 mm Very low 0
6 Dec 35.6 °C 46 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
7 Dec 37.2 °C 45 % 19 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 4
8 Dec 36.1 °C 45 % 19 km/h 3.1 mm Very low 2
9 Dec 35.4 °C 54 % 22 km/h 4.3 mm Very low 0
10 Dec 37.1 °C 44 % 30 km/h 12.0 mm Very low 0
11 Dec 32.2 °C 60 % 20 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 0
12 Dec 35.4 °C 49 % 32 km/h 0.8 mm Very low 3
13 Dec 36.7 °C 49 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Low 5
14 Dec 35.2 °C 51 % 27 km/h 0.4 mm Low 6
15 Dec 38.1 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
16 Dec 39.7 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
17 Dec 36.8 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 13
18 Dec 38.8 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 13
19 Dec 34.9 °C 50 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
20 Dec 34.4 °C 57 % 19 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 1
21 Dec 31.8 °C 63 % 23 km/h 8.2 mm Very low 0
22 Dec 29.8 °C 80 % 33 km/h 38.9 mm Very low 0
23 Dec 33.1 °C 59 % 36 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 0
24 Dec 33.8 °C 55 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm Very low 2
25 Dec 37.9 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.5 mm Low 7
26 Dec 28.0 °C 76 % 27 km/h 19.5 mm Very low 0
27 Dec after 33.8 °C 52 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 0
28 Dec after 37.5 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 5
29 Dec after 35.2 °C 52 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
30 Dec after 30.9 °C 66 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 5
31 Dec after 32.8 °C 59 % 26 km/h 2.9 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Nov 2023
After · 2 Jan 2024

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 5 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak83 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10119 µg/m³
Optical depth0.70
56789101112131415161718192021222324
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 · 379Every 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 Cáceres fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 December 2023 to 26 December 2023 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 December 2023 to 21 December 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,546 hectares (45.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cáceres (4,573 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
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.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 December 2023 → 26 December 2023.

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 7 December 2023 to 21 December 2023. 379 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 2025, 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.