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Cujubim fire, 24 August 2022 Cujubim

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2022, 05:31 UTC

The fire started on 24 August 2022 in Cujubim, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,252 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 259th largest in Rondônia since 2016 (of 300 with a page). Number 606 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cujubim · 2021Cujubim · 2019Cujubim · 2022Porto Velho · 2024

Burnt area
3,252ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
24 Aug 2022 – 10 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
24 Aug
2022
Heat detections
297
in a single hotspot: 117 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
276MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Aug10 Sept
10 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

25 Aug 2022 · 66 MW · 3 26 Aug 2022 · 17 MW · 6 27 Aug 2022 · 4 MW · 3 28 Aug 2022 · 6 MW · 1 29 Aug 2022 · 1,495 MW · 28 30 Aug 2022 · 593 MW · 62 31 Aug 2022 · 805 MW · 44 1 Sept 2022 · 195 MW · 38 2 Sept 2022 · 157 MW · 10 3 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 3 4 Sept 2022 · 286 MW · 26 5 Sept 2022 · 288 MW · 40 6 Sept 2022 · 116 MW · 26 8 Sept 2022 · 107 MW · 6 10 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1
25 Aug 28 Aug 29 Aug 31 Aug 3 Sept 6 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
40km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 18 Sept.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 517 ha in 2017, 234 ha in 2018, 1,869 ha in 2019, 1,696 ha in 2020, 2,267 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,011 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Cujubim 14,863 inhabitants where it started
    3,271 ha reached on 25 Aug
    0.8 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
25 Aug 34.4 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Aug 34.3 °C 41 % 19 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
27 Aug 34.3 °C 43 % 21 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
28 Aug 34.6 °C 53 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 21
29 Aug 33.7 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Aug 34.7 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
31 Aug 35.4 °C 33 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Sept 36.1 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept 35.0 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Sept 35.6 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Sept 34.7 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Sept 35.7 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Sept 34.8 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Sept 34.7 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Sept 35.3 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
9 Sept 36.2 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
10 Sept 34.2 °C 46 % 20 km/h 0.5 mm High 25
11 Sept after 33.5 °C 47 % 22 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Sept after 34.0 °C 47 % 23 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 15
13 Sept after 34.7 °C 45 % 27 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 16
14 Sept after 34.4 °C 42 % 21 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 20
15 Sept after 32.6 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
16 Sept after 35.4 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Sept after 35.4 °C 38 % 17 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
18 Sept after 32.4 °C 53 % 30 km/h 2.7 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Aug 2022
After · 17 Sept 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 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).

PM2.5 peak1,080 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM101,546 µg/m³
Optical depth4.20
2627282930311234567891011
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 · 297Every 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 Cujubim fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 August 2022 to 10 September 2022 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2022 to 8 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,252 hectares (32.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cujubim (3,271 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 September 2022 → 10 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 28 August 2022 → 24 August 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 28 August 2022 to 8 September 2022. 297 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.