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Ibotirama fire, October 2023 Ibotirama

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2023, 16:37 UTC

The fire started on 9 October 2023 in Ibotirama, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,913 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 337th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 467 with a page). Number 263 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Morpará · 2021Ibotirama · 2016Muquém do São Francisco · 2026Barra · 2017

Burnt area
3,913ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
9 Oct 2023 – 25 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Oct
2023
Heat detections
162
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
131MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct25 Oct
25 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

9 Oct 2023 · 36 MW · 3 10 Oct 2023 · 46 MW · 4 11 Oct 2023 · 58 MW · 6 12 Oct 2023 · 44 MW · 9 13 Oct 2023 · 22 MW · 4 14 Oct 2023 · 561 MW · 8 15 Oct 2023 · 68 MW · 8 16 Oct 2023 · 189 MW · 11 17 Oct 2023 · 69 MW · 11 18 Oct 2023 · 3 MW · 2 19 Oct 2023 · 366 MW · 31 20 Oct 2023 · 423 MW · 28 21 Oct 2023 · 190 MW · 17 22 Oct 2023 · 58 MW · 4 23 Oct 2023 · 33 MW · 6 24 Oct 2023 · 33 MW · 6 25 Oct 2023 · 30 MW · 4
9 Oct 12 Oct 14 Oct 15 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 24 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

40°high
44km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 26 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (39 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. Ibotirama 26,309 inhabitants where it started
    3,934 ha reached on 9 Oct
    2.2 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
2 Oct 39.0 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Oct 38.7 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Oct 38.8 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
5 Oct 36.6 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
6 Oct 38.5 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
7 Oct 38.1 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Oct 39.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Oct 38.7 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Oct 39.3 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Oct 38.5 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Oct 39.0 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Oct 40.0 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Oct 40.4 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Oct 38.0 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
16 Oct 37.9 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Oct 38.2 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Oct 39.0 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Oct 39.7 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Oct 39.1 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Oct 39.4 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Oct 38.2 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Oct 37.9 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
24 Oct 39.2 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Oct 37.9 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Oct after 36.4 °C 35 % 41 km/h 1.2 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Oct 2023
After · 1 Nov 2023

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 26 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.61
78910111213141516171819202122232425262728
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 · 162Every 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 Ibotirama fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 October 2023 and 25 October 2023: 17 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 3,913 hectares (39.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ibotirama (3,934 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 162 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 2025, 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.