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Cocos fire, 7 September 2025 Cocos

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2025, 16:01 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2025 in Cocos, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,466 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 100th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 466 with a page). Number 133 in Brazil in 2025, of 714.

Burnt area
9,466ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
7 Sept 2025 – 14 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Sept
2025
Heat detections
174
in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Sept 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept14 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

7891011121314

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
41km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 23 Sept.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,190 ha in 2019, 1,420 ha in 2020, 3,881 ha in 2021, 2 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,105 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cocos 19,151 inhabitants where it started
    9,511 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.9 %

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)
6 Sept 34.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept 33.3 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Sept 33.2 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Sept 34.8 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Sept 37.8 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Sept 35.6 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
12 Sept 36.2 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Sept 34.8 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept 33.2 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Sept after 34.2 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Sept after 34.5 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept after 35.1 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Sept after 34.9 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept after 31.4 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept after 33.2 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept after 36.0 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Sept after 36.9 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 34.5 °C 31 % 31 km/h 1.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2025
After · 21 Sept 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 12 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1012 µg/m³
Optical depth0.23
4567891011121314151617
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 · 174Every 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 7 September 2025 and 14 September 2025: 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 9,466 hectares (94.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cocos (9,511 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.