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Colniza fire, 11 August 2022 Colniza

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2022, 05:12 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2022 in Colniza, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,521 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 184th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 31 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Colniza · 2016Colniza · 2024Colniza · 2025Colniza · 2026

Burnt area
20,521ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
11 Aug 2022 – 11 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 Aug
2022
Heat detections
1,983
in a single hotspot: 931 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
741MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug11 Sept
11 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 2022 · 2,254 MW · 114 12 Aug 2022 · 1,820 MW · 112 13 Aug 2022 · 1,979 MW · 166 14 Aug 2022 · 185 MW · 92 15 Aug 2022 · 852 MW · 104 16 Aug 2022 · 528 MW · 79 17 Aug 2022 · 758 MW · 54 18 Aug 2022 · 173 MW · 33 19 Aug 2022 · 9 MW · 2 20 Aug 2022 · 1,725 MW · 181 21 Aug 2022 · 2,091 MW · 216 22 Aug 2022 · 2,307 MW · 90 23 Aug 2022 · 3,851 MW · 112 24 Aug 2022 · 996 MW · 114 25 Aug 2022 · 265 MW · 32 26 Aug 2022 · 238 MW · 56 27 Aug 2022 · 142 MW · 29 29 Aug 2022 · 22 MW · 4 30 Aug 2022 · 259 MW · 39 31 Aug 2022 · 125 MW · 43 1 Sept 2022 · 660 MW · 61 2 Sept 2022 · 25 MW · 11 3 Sept 2022 · 268 MW · 30 4 Sept 2022 · 339 MW · 54 5 Sept 2022 · 345 MW · 42 6 Sept 2022 · 353 MW · 55 7 Sept 2022 · 149 MW · 17 8 Sept 2022 · 65 MW · 17 9 Sept 2022 · 171 MW · 11 10 Sept 2022 · 22 MW · 12 11 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1
11 Aug 16 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug 26 Aug 1 Sept 6 Sept 11 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

37°high
47km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.4 mm on 18 Sept.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,285 ha in 2016, 953 ha in 2017, 1,196 ha in 2019, 966 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,648 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (205 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. Colniza where it started
    20,640 ha reached on 11 Aug
    0.7 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
11 Aug 31.4 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
12 Aug 33.6 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
13 Aug 35.0 °C 32 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Aug 33.5 °C 38 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Aug 32.8 °C 50 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
16 Aug 33.7 °C 46 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
17 Aug 34.4 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
18 Aug 35.0 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
19 Aug 29.8 °C 49 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
20 Aug 29.4 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Aug 33.5 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Aug 34.4 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Aug 35.1 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Aug 35.1 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Aug 34.0 °C 41 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Aug 34.3 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Aug 34.0 °C 46 % 24 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 18
28 Aug 34.8 °C 43 % 20 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
29 Aug 33.7 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
30 Aug 35.1 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Aug 35.3 °C 32 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Sept 35.1 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept 34.7 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Sept 36.6 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Sept 35.5 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Sept 35.7 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Sept 32.7 °C 45 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept 34.1 °C 48 % 25 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
8 Sept 34.1 °C 48 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
9 Sept 35.0 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
10 Sept 34.1 °C 44 % 20 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
11 Sept 34.5 °C 48 % 21 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 21
12 Sept after 33.9 °C 47 % 19 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
13 Sept after 33.3 °C 44 % 21 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
14 Sept after 35.8 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Sept after 33.2 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
16 Sept after 35.1 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
17 Sept after 35.4 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
18 Sept after 27.7 °C 77 % 28 km/h 5.4 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Aug 2022
After · 18 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 6 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 708 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 382: 25 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak708 µg/m³
Days over the guideline28 days
PM101,013 µg/m³
Optical depth3.46
91011121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345678
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 · 1,983Every 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 Colniza fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 August 2022 to 11 September 2022 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2022 to 5 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,521 hectares (205.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Colniza (20,640 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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 · 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: 5 September 2022 → 11 September 2022.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 August 2022 to 5 September 2022. 1,983 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 2020, 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.