Cujubim fire, 21 August 2022 Cujubim
The fire started on 21 August 2022 in Cujubim, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,970 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 32th largest in Rondônia since 2016 (of 300 with a page). Number 74 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 12,970ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 21 Aug 2022 – 11 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Aug
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 1,434
- in a single hotspot: 386 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 675MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 18 Sept.
This area had burned before
82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,547 ha in 2016, 1,575 ha in 2017, 911 ha in 2018, 6,920 ha in 2019, 4,706 ha in 2020, 11,343 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,678 ha that had burned before.
- 8,209 ha Porto Velho fire, July 2021 59,677 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,863 ha Cujubim fire, August 2019 4,437 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 407 ha Cujubim fire, August 2020 5,354 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 75 ha Cujubim fire, August 2021 3,627 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
13,042 ha reached on 14 Aug3.4 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Aug | 33.8 °C | 39 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 15 Aug | 34.0 °C | 43 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 16 Aug | 33.0 °C | 47 % | 30 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 17 Aug | 34.2 °C | 46 % | 34 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 18 Aug | 33.8 °C | 44 % | 22 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 22 |
| 19 Aug | 25.6 °C | 61 % | 51 km/h | 4.7 mm | Very low 5 |
| 20 Aug | 28.5 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 21 Aug | 31.8 °C | 34 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 22 Aug | 33.8 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 23 Aug | 35.5 °C | 25 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Aug | 35.5 °C | 26 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 25 Aug | 34.2 °C | 39 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 26 Aug | 34.5 °C | 41 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 27 Aug | 34.6 °C | 41 % | 21 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 28 Aug | 34.0 °C | 55 % | 21 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 22 |
| 29 Aug | 33.3 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 30 Aug | 34.2 °C | 34 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 31 Aug | 35.1 °C | 34 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Sept | 35.5 °C | 34 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 2 Sept | 34.7 °C | 41 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 3 Sept | 35.5 °C | 34 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 4 Sept | 34.5 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Sept | 35.0 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 6 Sept | 34.5 °C | 32 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 7 Sept | 34.8 °C | 40 % | 23 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 8 Sept | 34.8 °C | 42 % | 28 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 29 |
| 9 Sept | 35.7 °C | 41 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 10 Sept | 34.2 °C | 46 % | 18 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 26 |
| 11 Sept | 33.0 °C | 50 % | 21 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 24 |
| 12 Sept after | 33.9 °C | 49 % | 24 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 13 Sept after | 34.5 °C | 45 % | 27 km/h | 1.6 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 14 Sept after | 34.0 °C | 46 % | 21 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 15 Sept after | 32.7 °C | 46 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 25 |
| 16 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 17 Sept after | 35.2 °C | 40 % | 17 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 27 |
| 18 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 53 % | 30 km/h | 2.5 mm | Low 9 |
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 6 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 1,080 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 636: 42 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 · 1,434Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,758 haCujubim29 July 2019 · 27 days · 10 km away
- 7,795 haCujubimAugust 2025 · 14 days · 10 km away
- 100,993 haPorto Velho7 July 2024 · 70 days · 16 km away
- 16,173 haCujubim24 August 2022 · 30 days · 18 km away
- 59,677 haPorto VelhoJuly 2021 · 38 days · 32 km away
- 15,795 haCujubim30 July 2019 · 27 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cujubim fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 August 2022 and 11 September 2022: 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 12,970 hectares (129.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cujubim (13,042 ha, 3.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,434 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.
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.