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Itaituba fire, 16 July 2024 Itaituba

Out · last detection 8 Aug 2024, 16:39 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2024 in Itaituba, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,713 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 263th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1096 with a page). Number 379 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Burnt area
8,713ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
16 Jul 2024 – 7 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Jul
2024
Heat detections
833
in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
6.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Aug 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul7 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

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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
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 110 ha in 2017, 985 ha in 2020, 1,044 ha in 2021, 12,866 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,744 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Itaituba 123,314 inhabitants where it started
    8,780 ha reached on 17 Jul
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
16 Jul 34.3 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Jul 33.7 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Jul 34.0 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jul 34.5 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jul 34.0 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jul 35.6 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Jul 34.7 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul 34.8 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jul 35.2 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jul 35.0 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Jul 33.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Jul 34.2 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
28 Jul 34.4 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul 34.9 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Jul 36.0 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
31 Jul 35.6 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Aug 35.8 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Aug 35.3 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug 34.6 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Aug 34.4 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Aug 34.7 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Aug 34.1 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Aug 36.2 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Aug after 36.4 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Aug after 36.5 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Aug after 35.3 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Aug after 35.6 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Aug after 34.4 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Aug after 33.6 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Aug after 34.4 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
15 Aug after 34.4 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
16 Aug after 36.2 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Aug after 36.2 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Aug after 35.5 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Aug after 36.5 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Aug after 36.1 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Aug after 36.9 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Aug after 37.4 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2024
After · 14 Aug 2024

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 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 124 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 80: 5.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak124 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10177 µg/m³
Optical depth1.40
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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 · 833Every 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 Itaituba fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 July 2024 and 7 August 2024: 23 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 8,713 hectares (87.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Itaituba (8,780 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.