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Corumbá fire, 22 September 2023 Corumbá

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2023, 18:22 UTC

The fire started on 22 September 2023 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,422 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 222th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 112 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Burnt area
6,422ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
22 Sept 2023 – 27 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 Sept
2023
Heat detections
188
in a single hotspot: 134 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

28 Sept 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Sept27 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

22232425262728

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
53km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,129 ha in 2016, 1,608 ha in 2017, 5,397 ha in 2019, 3,646 ha in 2020, 3,460 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,041 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    6,523 ha reached on 22 Sept
    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)
22 Sept 39.2 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Sept 39.5 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Sept 40.1 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Sept 40.5 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Sept 40.9 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Sept 32.7 °C 43 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Sept after 29.2 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Sept after 35.2 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Sept after 33.0 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Oct after 34.4 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Oct after 38.5 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
3 Oct after 40.2 °C 27 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Oct after 37.7 °C 33 % 51 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46
5 Oct after 28.9 °C 51 % 34 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
6 Oct after 39.9 °C 30 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Oct after 39.8 °C 30 % 61 km/h 1.3 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Sept 2023
After · 4 Oct 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 28 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1054 µg/m³
Optical depth1.04
2021222324252627282930
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 · 188Every 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 22 September 2023 and 27 September 2023: 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 6,422 hectares (64.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (6,523 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

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.