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Campinápolis fire, 22 August 2017 Campinápolis

Out · last detection 29 Aug 2017, 17:26 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2017 in Campinápolis, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,605 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 490th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 183 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…
Burnt area
9,605ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
22 Aug 2017 – 28 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 Aug
2017
Heat detections
260
in a single hotspot: 238 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
349MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug28 Aug
29 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 2017 · 86 MW · 7 23 Aug 2017 · 90 MW · 9 24 Aug 2017 · 244 MW · 42 25 Aug 2017 · 1,006 MW · 67 26 Aug 2017 · 622 MW · 51 27 Aug 2017 · 541 MW · 52 28 Aug 2017 · 181 MW · 20 29 Aug 2017 · 25 MW · 5
22 Aug 24 Aug 25 Aug 26 Aug 28 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
46km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,554 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (96 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. Campinápolis 15,347 inhabitants where it started
    9,667 ha reached on 20 Aug
    1.6 %

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)
20 Aug 35.4 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Aug 31.8 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Aug 35.2 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
23 Aug 34.2 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Aug 34.3 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Aug 34.4 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Aug 35.6 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Aug 36.5 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Aug 36.6 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Aug after 36.4 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Aug after 37.2 °C 21 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
31 Aug after 37.1 °C 19 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Sept after 38.0 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Sept after 35.9 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Sept after 34.4 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept after 33.8 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Sept after 34.3 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Sept after 35.3 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept after 36.2 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Sept after 37.4 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Sept after 37.2 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Sept after 37.0 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Sept after 37.3 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2017
After · 4 Sept 2017

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 · 260Every 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 Campinápolis fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 August 2017 and 28 August 2017: 7 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,605 hectares (96.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Campinápolis (9,667 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 260 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.