Skip to content
worldfires
BR · Brazil · →

Corumbá fire, March 2024 Corumbá

Out · last detection 21 Mar 2024, 17:01 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2024 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,663 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 213th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 487 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Burnt area
6,663ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
13 Mar 2024 – 21 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
13 Mar
2024
Heat detections
515
in a single hotspot: 356 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Energy released
8.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Mar 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar21 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

131415161718192021

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
51km/h · peak gust
44%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.7 mm on 22 Mar.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,442 ha in 2020, 4,290 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,833 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    6,680 ha reached on 9 Mar
    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)
9 Mar 35.0 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
10 Mar 35.3 °C 53 % 29 km/h 0.6 mm Low 7
11 Mar 35.0 °C 56 % 25 km/h 0.8 mm Low 6
12 Mar 36.7 °C 49 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Low 10
13 Mar 35.4 °C 56 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Low 11
14 Mar 36.8 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 11
15 Mar 35.0 °C 56 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
16 Mar 36.8 °C 46 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
17 Mar 35.9 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
18 Mar 36.7 °C 47 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 13
19 Mar 36.8 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 15
20 Mar 36.9 °C 45 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 17
21 Mar 36.3 °C 45 % 51 km/h 10.3 mm Very low 4
22 Mar after 28.1 °C 71 % 36 km/h 10.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Mar 2024
After · 28 Mar 2024

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 19 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
Optical depth0.34
1112131415161718192021222324
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 · 515Every 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 13 March 2024 and 21 March 2024: 9 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 6,663 hectares (66.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (6,680 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
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.