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Jaíba fire, August 2022 Jaíba

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2022, 16:11 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2022 in Jaíba, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,006 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 227th largest in Minas Gerais since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 685 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jaíba · 2018Jaíba · 2025Itacarambi · 2021Jaíba · 2026

Burnt area
3,006ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
18 Aug 2022 – 31 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
18 Aug
2022
Heat detections
170
in a single hotspot: 421 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
572MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug31 Aug
31 Aug 2022

How it evolved, day by day

18 Aug 2022 · 7 MW · 2 20 Aug 2022 · 1 MW · 1 24 Aug 2022 · 18 MW · 3 25 Aug 2022 · 45 MW · 7 26 Aug 2022 · 29 MW · 7 27 Aug 2022 · 5 MW · 3 29 Aug 2022 · 4,850 MW · 64 30 Aug 2022 · 104 MW · 33 31 Aug 2022 · 87 MW · 7
18 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 29 Aug 31 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
54km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,113 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. Jaíba 37,660 inhabitants where it started
    3,023 ha reached on 18 Aug
    1.1 %

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.

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 32.1 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Aug 33.9 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Aug 30.4 °C 25 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Aug 26.8 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Aug 28.2 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Aug 29.0 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Aug 30.5 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Aug 31.7 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Aug 32.6 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Aug 32.2 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Aug 32.5 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Aug 33.8 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Aug 31.0 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Aug 27.9 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Sept after 30.1 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Sept after 32.0 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Sept after 33.3 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Sept after 35.3 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Sept after 32.7 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Sept after 30.1 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept after 32.3 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Sept after 32.4 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Sept after 32.8 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Sept after 35.7 °C 12 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept after 37.8 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Sept after 35.3 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept after 35.8 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Sept after 37.6 °C 11 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Sept after 39.0 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Sept after 38.2 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Aug 2022
After · 7 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 18 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak10 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1014 µg/m³
Optical depth0.22
16171819202122232425262728293031123
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 · 170Every 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 Jaíba fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 August 2022 and 31 August 2022: 14 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 3,006 hectares (30.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Jaíba (3,023 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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. 170 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.

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.