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Cocalinho fire, 2 September 2016 Cocalinho

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2016, 16:55 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2016 in Cocalinho, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,410 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 319th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 54 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Burnt area
13,410ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
2 Sept 2016 – 17 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Sept
2016
Heat detections
636
in a single hotspot: 228 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
562MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

18 Sept 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept17 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

2 Sept 2016 · 148 MW · 2 3 Sept 2016 · 42 MW · 6 4 Sept 2016 · 397 MW · 23 5 Sept 2016 · 113 MW · 16 6 Sept 2016 · 37 MW · 8 7 Sept 2016 · 340 MW · 30 8 Sept 2016 · 40 MW · 8 10 Sept 2016 · 2,396 MW · 78 11 Sept 2016 · 2,453 MW · 112 12 Sept 2016 · 2,260 MW · 284 13 Sept 2016 · 75 MW · 26 14 Sept 2016 · 49 MW · 6 15 Sept 2016 · 23 MW · 8 17 Sept 2016 · 45 MW · 10 18 Sept 2016 · 17 MW · 3
2 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept 12 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

41°high
47km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.2 mm on 23 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Cocalinho 6,220 inhabitants where it started
    13,487 ha reached on 2 Sept
    0.8 %

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)
2 Sept 39.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Sept 37.8 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 36.5 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Sept 39.0 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Sept 38.0 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Sept 40.4 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Sept 39.8 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Sept 40.7 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Sept 39.1 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Sept 39.0 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Sept 39.7 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
13 Sept 39.7 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Sept 40.5 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Sept 40.1 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Sept 39.9 °C 19 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Sept 39.0 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Sept after 37.6 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept after 36.8 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept after 38.4 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 43
21 Sept after 38.7 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 43
22 Sept after 39.5 °C 26 % 32 km/h 1.9 mm High 31
23 Sept after 30.1 °C 62 % 31 km/h 10.2 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2016
After · 24 Sept 2016

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 · 636Every 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 Cocalinho fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 September 2016 and 17 September 2016: 16 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 13,410 hectares (134.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cocalinho (13,487 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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
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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.