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Cotegipe fire, September 2022 Cotegipe

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2022, 16:44 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2022 in Cotegipe, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,209 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 187th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 467 with a page). Number 223 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cotegipe · 2019Cotegipe · 2021Cotegipe · 2025

Burnt area
6,209ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
23 Sept 2022 – 14 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
23 Sept
2022
Heat detections
298
in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
294MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept14 Oct
11 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 2 26 Sept 2022 · 15 MW · 1 27 Sept 2022 · 2 MW · 1 28 Sept 2022 · 1,557 MW · 84 29 Sept 2022 · 461 MW · 40 30 Sept 2022 · 1,138 MW · 43 1 Oct 2022 · 579 MW · 55 2 Oct 2022 · 170 MW · 15 3 Oct 2022 · 11 MW · 4 4 Oct 2022 · 77 MW · 9 5 Oct 2022 · 109 MW · 6 6 Oct 2022 · 324 MW · 21 7 Oct 2022 · 217 MW · 11 9 Oct 2022 · 23 MW · 4 10 Oct 2022 · 1 MW · 1 11 Oct 2022 · 11 MW · 1
23 Sept 28 Sept 1 Oct 4 Oct 7 Oct 11 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
41km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 24 Oct.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 642 ha in 2017, 978 ha in 2019, 372 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,208 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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. Cotegipe 13,063 inhabitants where it started
    6,247 ha reached on 23 Sept
    1.4 %

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 area0.17 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of 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)
23 Sept 37.2 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Sept 36.3 °C 32 % 39 km/h 8.2 mm Moderate 12
25 Sept 33.4 °C 32 % 35 km/h 11.0 mm Low 6
26 Sept 34.5 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Sept 35.8 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Sept 35.8 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Sept 37.2 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Sept 37.0 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Oct 36.2 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Oct 35.9 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Oct 36.2 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Oct 37.4 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Oct 38.4 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 Oct 38.1 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Oct 37.7 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Oct 38.5 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Oct 37.8 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Oct 36.2 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Oct 36.8 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Oct 35.6 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Oct 35.9 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Oct 36.9 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Oct after 36.0 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Oct after 36.1 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Oct after 35.4 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Oct after 36.0 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Oct after 37.1 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Oct after 36.9 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Oct after 36.7 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Oct after 36.8 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Oct after 35.0 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
24 Oct after 32.4 °C 44 % 33 km/h 6.2 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Sept 2022
After · 21 Oct 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 8 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1085 µg/m³
Optical depth0.69
24252627282930123456789101112
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 · 298Every 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 Cotegipe fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2022 to 14 October 2022 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 September 2022 to 9 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,209 hectares (62.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cotegipe (6,247 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 9 October 2022 → 14 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 26 September 2022 → 23 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 September 2022 to 9 October 2022. 298 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.