Skip to content
worldfires
BR · Brazil · →

Cocos fire, June 2023 Cocos

Out · last detection 4 Jul 2023, 16:56 UTC

The fire started on 27 June 2023 in Cocos, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,701 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 363th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 466 with a page). Number 307 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Burnt area
3,701ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
27 Jun 2023 – 4 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
27 Jun
2023
Heat detections
97
in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Energy released
630MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

4 Jul 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jun4 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

272829301234

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
38km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,321 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Cocos 19,151 inhabitants where it started
    3,723 ha reached on 27 Jun
    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)
20 Jun 28.2 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jun 27.8 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jun 27.5 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jun 27.4 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jun 27.9 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jun 26.7 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Jun 26.6 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Jun 28.3 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Jun 28.3 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Jun 28.8 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Jun 28.3 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Jul 27.7 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Jul 28.4 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jul 29.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Jul 27.7 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jul after 25.7 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Jul after 26.1 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jul after 28.0 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Jul after 30.6 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Jul after 30.3 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Jul after 31.3 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Jul after 31.2 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jul after 31.4 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Jul after 32.0 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Jul after 32.4 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jun 2023
After · 11 Jul 2023

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 2 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.18
2526272829301234567
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 · 97Every 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 27 June 2023 and 4 July 2023: 8 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 3,701 hectares (37.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cocos (3,723 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
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.