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Cocalinho fire, 28 August 2024 Cocalinho, Novo Santo Antônio

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2024, 16:55 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2024 in Cocalinho, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,617 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1611th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 1027 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…
Burnt area
3,617ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
28 Aug 2024 – 8 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
28 Aug
2024
Heat detections
159
in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
156MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug8 Sept
8 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

28 Aug 2024 · 82 MW · 16 29 Aug 2024 · 79 MW · 9 30 Aug 2024 · 209 MW · 12 31 Aug 2024 · 107 MW · 13 1 Sept 2024 · 108 MW · 10 2 Sept 2024 · 271 MW · 21 3 Sept 2024 · 265 MW · 32 4 Sept 2024 · 331 MW · 20 5 Sept 2024 · 109 MW · 13 6 Sept 2024 · 99 MW · 10 8 Sept 2024 · 60 MW · 3
28 Aug 30 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 8 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

39°high
44km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,983 ha in 2017, 3,025 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,437 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Cocalinho 6,220 inhabitants where it started
    3,621 ha reached on 28 Aug
    0.2 %
  2. Novo Santo Antônio 2,015 inhabitants
    1 ha reached on 4 Sept
    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 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)
28 Aug 37.0 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Aug 35.1 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Aug 36.0 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Aug 36.8 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Sept 37.6 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Sept 37.7 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Sept 37.8 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 39.3 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Sept 39.1 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Sept 38.7 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Sept 38.8 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Sept 38.3 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
9 Sept after 37.9 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Sept after 37.8 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
11 Sept after 37.8 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
12 Sept after 38.5 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
13 Sept after 38.5 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
14 Sept after 38.6 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Sept after 38.8 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Sept after 39.7 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Sept after 40.3 °C 15 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Sept after 39.9 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2024
After · 15 Sept 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 1 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 88 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak88 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10125 µg/m³
Optical depth0.98
262728293031123456789
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 · 159Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 August 2024 to 8 September 2024 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2024 to 6 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,617 hectares (36.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cocalinho (3,621 ha, 0.2 %); Novo Santo Antônio (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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. Last day with fire: 6 September 2024 → 8 September 2024.

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 28 August 2024 to 6 September 2024. 159 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.