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Cocalinho fire, August 2025 Cocalinho

Out · last detection 21 Aug 2025, 16:51 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2025 in Cocalinho, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,128 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 847th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 254 in Brazil in 2025, of 714.

Burnt area
6,128ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
18 Aug 2025 – 20 Aug 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
18 Aug
2025
Heat detections
200
in a single hotspot: 146 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
3.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Aug 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug20 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

18192021

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
39km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,089 ha in 2016, 326 ha in 2017, 2,740 ha in 2019, 175 ha in 2020, 834 ha in 2021, 2,495 ha in 2023, 16 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,650 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cocalinho 6,220 inhabitants where it started
    6,149 ha reached on 18 Aug
    0.4 %

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)
16 Aug 36.3 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Aug 36.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Aug 36.2 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Aug 36.5 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Aug 35.9 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Aug after 36.3 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Aug after 36.6 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Aug after 37.2 °C 18 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Aug after 36.7 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Aug after 36.8 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Aug after 37.4 °C 20 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Aug after 37.1 °C 22 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Aug after 37.3 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Aug after 37.7 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Aug after 36.5 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Aug after 37.3 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Aug 2025
After · 27 Aug 2025

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 19 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
Optical depth0.25
161718192021222324
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 · 200Every 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 18 August 2025 and 20 August 2025: 3 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 6,128 hectares (61.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cocalinho (6,149 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.

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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.