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Corumbá fire, 23 January 2020 Corumbá

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2020, 16:47 UTC

The fire started on 23 January 2020 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,655 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 320th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 547 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Burnt area
4,655ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
23 Jan 2020 – 28 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
23 Jan
2020
Heat detections
266
in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
1.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

28 Jan 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jan28 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

232425262728

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
53km/h · peak gust
38%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.0 mm on 31 Jan.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 81 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    4,670 ha reached on 19 Jan
    0.1 %

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)
19 Jan 34.9 °C 52 % 24 km/h 0.7 mm Very low 4
20 Jan 37.2 °C 44 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm Low 8
21 Jan 35.9 °C 48 % 31 km/h 1.5 mm Low 6
22 Jan 30.8 °C 68 % 37 km/h 15.6 mm Very low 0
23 Jan 32.1 °C 60 % 43 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 2
24 Jan 30.6 °C 62 % 32 km/h 0.7 mm Very low 3
25 Jan 35.0 °C 46 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Low 6
26 Jan 37.3 °C 38 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
27 Jan 37.0 °C 44 % 24 km/h 0.6 mm Low 8
28 Jan 36.1 °C 46 % 28 km/h 7.2 mm Very low 1
29 Jan after 34.8 °C 49 % 45 km/h 2.2 mm Very low 4
30 Jan after 33.8 °C 53 % 53 km/h 10.1 mm Very low 1
31 Jan after 32.3 °C 63 % 34 km/h 8.0 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jan 2020
After · 4 Feb 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 266Every 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 Corumbá fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 January 2020 and 28 January 2020: 6 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 4,655 hectares (46.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (4,670 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 9, class Low.
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.