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Jacareacanga fire, August 2023 Jacareacanga

Out · last detection 6 Sept 2023, 16:58 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2023 in Jacareacanga, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,169 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1034th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1106 with a page). Number 398 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jacareacanga · 2022Jacareacanga · 2021Jacareacanga · 2026Jacareacanga · 2024

Burnt area
3,169ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
18 Aug 2023 – 6 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
18 Aug
2023
Heat detections
268
in a single hotspot: 168 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
152MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug6 Sept
6 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

18 Aug 2023 · 291 MW · 12 19 Aug 2023 · 727 MW · 30 20 Aug 2023 · 625 MW · 51 21 Aug 2023 · 90 MW · 10 22 Aug 2023 · 75 MW · 13 23 Aug 2023 · 64 MW · 13 24 Aug 2023 · 66 MW · 6 25 Aug 2023 · 136 MW · 13 27 Aug 2023 · 3 MW · 1 28 Aug 2023 · 122 MW · 7 29 Aug 2023 · 198 MW · 21 30 Aug 2023 · 80 MW · 13 31 Aug 2023 · 6 MW · 2 1 Sept 2023 · 25 MW · 4 2 Sept 2023 · 37 MW · 9 3 Sept 2023 · 21 MW · 12 4 Sept 2023 · 195 MW · 21 5 Sept 2023 · 25 MW · 18 6 Sept 2023 · 93 MW · 12
18 Aug 19 Aug 21 Aug 24 Aug 28 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
36km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 97 ha in 2016, 274 ha in 2017, 243 ha in 2018, 1,129 ha in 2019, 1,279 ha in 2021, 1,195 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,963 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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. Jacareacanga 24,042 inhabitants where it started
    3,180 ha reached on 18 Aug
    0.1 %

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)
18 Aug 34.3 °C 45 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Aug 34.9 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Aug 36.5 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Aug 35.7 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Aug 35.1 °C 45 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Aug 35.2 °C 48 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
24 Aug 34.7 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Aug 35.3 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
26 Aug 31.9 °C 60 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
27 Aug 34.9 °C 47 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 Aug 35.5 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Aug 34.6 °C 45 % 20 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
30 Aug 33.6 °C 54 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
31 Aug 34.7 °C 49 % 26 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 21
1 Sept 35.8 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
2 Sept 35.3 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Sept 36.0 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Sept 36.0 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Sept 35.6 °C 39 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Sept 36.2 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept after 35.3 °C 43 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
8 Sept after 34.2 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
9 Sept after 36.3 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Sept after 35.8 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Sept after 34.8 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.6 mm High 23
12 Sept after 34.2 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
13 Sept after 35.9 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
14 Sept after 36.5 °C 36 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Sept after 35.9 °C 43 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Sept after 32.8 °C 51 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Aug 2023
After · 13 Sept 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 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 70 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak70 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10101 µg/m³
Optical depth0.97
1617181920212223242526272829303112
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 · 268Every 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 Jacareacanga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 August 2023 to 6 September 2023 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 August 2023 to 30 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,169 hectares (31.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Jacareacanga (3,180 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 36 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 30 August 2023 → 6 September 2023.

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 18 August 2023 to 30 August 2023. 268 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.