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Campinápolis fire, 10 September 2020 Santo Antônio do Leste, Campinápolis

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2020, 16:17 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2020 in Campinápolis, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,043 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 365th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 151 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Santo Antônio do Leste · 2016Santo Antônio do Leste · 2016Campinápolis · 2024Santo Antônio do Leste · 2018

Burnt area
12,043ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
10 Sept 2020 – 15 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
10 Sept
2020
Heat detections
313
in a single hotspot: 246 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept15 Sept
15 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 2020 · 5 MW · 1 11 Sept 2020 · 1,697 MW · 58 12 Sept 2020 · 1,503 MW · 115 13 Sept 2020 · 2,264 MW · 106 14 Sept 2020 · 2,398 MW · 26 15 Sept 2020 · 147 MW · 7
10 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept 15 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

38°high
41km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 21 Sept.

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,740 ha in 2016, 213 ha in 2017, 5,405 ha in 2018, 60 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,158 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.6% of the area of London (120 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. Santo Antônio do Leste 4,099 inhabitants
    12,053 ha reached on 10 Sept
    3.5 %
  2. Campinápolis 15,347 inhabitants where it started
    52 ha
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
10 Sept 37.6 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Sept 36.8 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Sept 37.0 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Sept 36.0 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Sept 35.8 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Sept 35.9 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Sept after 35.9 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Sept after 36.9 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Sept after 38.0 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Sept after 37.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Sept after 34.5 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Sept after 34.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Sept 2020
After · 22 Sept 2020

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 · 313Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2020 to 15 September 2020 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2020 to 15 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,043 hectares (120.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Santo Antônio do Leste (12,053 ha, 3.5 %); Campinápolis (52 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.
  1. Start date: 11 September 2020 → 10 September 2020.

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 11 September 2020 to 15 September 2020. 313 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.