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Cocos fire, 10 September 2022 Cocos

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2022, 16:55 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2022 in Cocos, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,968 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 152th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 466 with a page). Number 197 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Burnt area
6,968ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
10 Sept 2022 – 19 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Sept
2022
Heat detections
263
in a single hotspot: 280 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
5.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept19 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

101112131415161719

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
38km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.3 mm on 24 Sept.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 226 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Cocos 19,151 inhabitants where it started
    6,992 ha reached on 10 Sept
    0.7 %

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)
10 Sept 33.6 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept 35.8 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept 33.5 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Sept 34.1 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept 35.7 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Sept 37.3 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Sept 36.7 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Sept 35.5 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Sept 32.0 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
19 Sept 33.2 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Sept after 33.5 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
21 Sept after 31.3 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
22 Sept after 31.8 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Sept after 33.1 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Sept after 34.3 °C 33 % 35 km/h 6.3 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Sept 2022
After · 26 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 18 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 92 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak92 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10132 µg/m³
Optical depth1.18
8910111213141516171819202122
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 · 263Every 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 Cocos fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 September 2022 and 19 September 2022: 10 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 6,968 hectares (69.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cocos (6,992 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.