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Cavalcante fire, August 2022 Cavalcante, Paranã

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2022, 16:43 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2022 in Cavalcante, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,652 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 58th largest in Goiás since 2016 (of 548 with a page). Number 64 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Burnt area
13,652ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
27 Aug 2022 – 8 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
27 Aug
2022
Heat detections
632
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
4.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug8 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

2728293031123456789

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
53km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,244 ha in 2016, 6,152 ha in 2019, 31 ha in 2020, 295 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,935 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cavalcante 9,583 inhabitants where it started
    13,057 ha reached on 20 Aug
    1.9 %
  2. Paranã 10,542 inhabitants
    661 ha reached on 23 Aug
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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 32.1 °C 21 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Aug 31.3 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Aug 30.8 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Aug 31.4 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Aug 32.8 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Aug 32.7 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Aug 33.5 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Aug 32.2 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Aug 33.7 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Aug 34.6 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Aug 33.5 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Aug 31.7 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Sept 31.7 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Sept 32.2 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Sept 33.9 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Sept 35.0 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Sept 35.3 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Sept 34.2 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Sept 31.6 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Sept 34.0 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept after 35.2 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Sept after 36.0 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Sept after 37.0 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Sept after 37.2 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Sept after 36.6 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Sept after 36.6 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Sept after 36.7 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Sept after 38.3 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Sept after 34.5 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Sept after 32.0 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Sept after 33.1 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Sept after 33.4 °C 38 % 34 km/h 1.3 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Aug 2022
After · 15 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 8 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1041 µg/m³
Optical depth0.45
252627282930311234567891011
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 · 632Every 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 Cavalcante fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2022 and 8 September 2022: 13 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 13,652 hectares (136.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cavalcante (13,057 ha, 1.9 %); Paranã (661 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.