Lábrea fire, 4 August 2021 Lábrea
The fire started on 4 August 2021 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,415 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 138th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 362 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lábrea · 2019Lábrea · 2017Lábrea · 2020Lábrea · 2022
- Burnt area
- 5,415ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 4 Aug 2021 – 17 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 372
- in a single hotspot: 110 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 310MW
- 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 36 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: 1,689 ha in 2016, 1,966 ha in 2017, 1,910 ha in 2018, 5,165 ha in 2019, 6,258 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,229 ha that had burned before.
- 4,538 ha Lábrea fire, August 2019 9,059 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,548 ha Lábrea fire, August 2017 3,121 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 466 ha Lábrea fire, August 2020 5,190 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
-
5,464 ha reached on 4 Aug0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Aug | 34.9 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 5 Aug | 35.9 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 6 Aug | 35.6 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Aug | 35.3 °C | 30 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 8 Aug | 36.4 °C | 28 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Aug | 36.2 °C | 29 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Aug | 35.2 °C | 32 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 11 Aug | 34.9 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 12 Aug | 32.7 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Aug | 33.3 °C | 32 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Aug | 34.1 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 15 Aug | 34.4 °C | 33 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Aug | 36.4 °C | 30 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Aug | 35.8 °C | 33 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 18 Aug after | 35.6 °C | 38 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 19 Aug after | 35.6 °C | 32 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Aug after | 34.3 °C | 41 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 21 Aug after | 35.1 °C | 43 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 29 |
| 22 Aug after | 35.6 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 23 Aug after | 36.3 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Aug after | 36.7 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 25 Aug after | 37.0 °C | 39 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Aug after | 38.1 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Aug after | 33.3 °C | 45 % | 31 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 28 |
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.
Detections table · 372Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 26,762 haLábrea9 August 2022 · 33 days · 11 km away
- 43,699 haLábrea13 July 2024 · 54 days · 20 km away
- 35,986 haLábrea14 August 2022 · 28 days · 26 km away
- 15,510 haLábrea7 August 2020 · 20 days · 31 km away
- 41,632 haLábrea28 July 2021 · 34 days · 33 km away
- 14,695 haLábrea25 July 2019 · 31 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lábrea fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 August 2021 and 17 August 2021: 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 5,415 hectares (54.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lábrea (5,464 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 372 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.
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.