Corumbá fire, 18 July 2024 Corumbá
The fire started on 18 July 2024 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,142 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 152th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 360 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.
- Burnt area
- 9,142ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 18 Jul 2024 – 8 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 18 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 357
- in a single hotspot: 280 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 5.9GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.5 mm on 9 Aug.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 893 ha in 2016, 7,272 ha in 2019, 3,577 ha in 2020, 3,966 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,220 ha that had burned before.
- 3,966 ha Corumbá fire, September 2021 44,147 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,726 ha Corumbá fire, August 2019 3,909 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,670 ha Corumbá fire, October 2019 11,689 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,341 ha Corumbá fire, October 2020 5,778 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4 ha Corumbá fire, April 2020 7,260 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Corumbá fire, November 2019 3,053 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
9,201 ha reached on 18 Jul0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Jul | 34.9 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 19 Jul | 35.7 °C | 21 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 20 Jul | 35.7 °C | 17 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Jul | 35.5 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Jul | 33.8 °C | 21 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Jul | 35.1 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 24 Jul | 35.4 °C | 19 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 25 Jul | 36.2 °C | 21 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Jul | 36.3 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Jul | 37.2 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 28 Jul | 36.8 °C | 14 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 29 Jul | 30.1 °C | 38 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 30 Jul | 24.3 °C | 59 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 31 Jul | 35.1 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Aug | 36.9 °C | 25 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 2 Aug | 37.5 °C | 21 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 3 Aug | 37.0 °C | 22 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 4 Aug | 36.5 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Aug | 36.9 °C | 23 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 6 Aug | 35.5 °C | 18 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 7 Aug | 36.3 °C | 23 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 8 Aug | 24.2 °C | 77 % | 41 km/h | 5.8 mm | Very low 2 |
| 9 Aug after | 15.1 °C | 57 % | 44 km/h | 10.5 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 9 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 76 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 357Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 44,147 haCorumbá7 September 2021 · 25 days · 13 km away
- 35,314 haCorumbá7 September 2019 · 14 days · 23 km away
- 21,988 haCorumbá17 July 2024 · 22 days · 25 km away
- 98,626 haCorumbá24 September 2020 · 24 days · 32 km away
- 22,659 haCorumbá30 July 2020 · 15 days · 34 km away
- 74,804 haCorumbá21 June 2024 · 16 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Corumbá fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2024 and 8 August 2024: 22 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 9,142 hectares (91.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Corumbá (9,201 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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
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.