Floriano fire, 21 August 2022 Floriano
The fire started on 21 August 2022 in Floriano, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,294 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 236th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 220 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,294ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 21 Aug 2022 – 5 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Aug
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 258
- in a single hotspot: 35 MW
- Danger at start
- 55
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 144MW
- 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 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,099 ha in 2016, 2,460 ha in 2017, 3,666 ha in 2018, 5,585 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,111 ha that had burned before.
- 5,585 ha Floriano fire, August 2020 9,226 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,520 ha Floriano fire, July 2018 6,410 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,041 ha Floriano fire, June 2016 16,491 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,458 ha Floriano fire, September 2017 3,193 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
-
6,335 ha reached on 22 Aug1.8 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.24 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Aug | 34.3 °C | 22 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 22 Aug | 34.1 °C | 25 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 23 Aug | 35.3 °C | 27 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Aug | 35.9 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 25 Aug | 35.2 °C | 21 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 26 Aug | 34.8 °C | 19 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 27 Aug | 35.0 °C | 20 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 28 Aug | 35.4 °C | 24 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 29 Aug | 37.1 °C | 16 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 30 Aug | 36.2 °C | 20 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 31 Aug | 34.6 °C | 24 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 1 Sept | 34.9 °C | 20 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 2 Sept | 35.9 °C | 21 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 3 Sept | 35.7 °C | 23 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Sept | 36.5 °C | 25 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Sept | 37.1 °C | 24 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 6 Sept after | 36.5 °C | 18 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 7 Sept after | 36.1 °C | 20 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 8 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 22 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 9 Sept after | 36.1 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 10 Sept after | 37.0 °C | 22 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 11 Sept after | 37.0 °C | 23 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 12 Sept after | 37.2 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 13 Sept after | 36.8 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 14 Sept after | 38.3 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 15 Sept after | 37.6 °C | 26 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
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 28 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 258Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,491 haFlorianoJune 2016 · 35 days · 13 km away
- 10,642 haFlorianoAugust 2024 · 25 days · 19 km away
- 18,305 haNazaré do PiauíSeptember 2019 · 20 days · 31 km away
- 14,508 haNazaré do PiauíAugust 2026 · 18 days · 32 km away
- 14,770 haAmaranteSeptember 2025 · 26 days · 37 km away
- 14,264 haFrancisco AyresSeptember 2021 · 23 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Floriano fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2022 to 5 September 2022 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 August 2022 to 1 September 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,294 hectares (62.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Floriano (6,335 ha, 1.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 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.
- Last day with fire: 1 September 2022 → 5 September 2022.
- Start date: 23 August 2022 → 21 August 2022.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 August 2022 to 1 September 2022. 258 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.
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.