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Lábrea fire, 12 August 2022 Lábrea

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2022, 17:10 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2022 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,260 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 67th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 157 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Burnt area
8,260ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
12 Aug 2022 – 27 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
12 Aug
2022
Heat detections
1,092
in a single hotspot: 1,385 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
30.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

28 Aug 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug27 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1213141516171819202122232425262728

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
55km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 11 Sept.

This area had burned before

36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 823 ha in 2019, 2,256 ha in 2020, 3,660 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,011 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Lábrea 45,448 inhabitants where it started
    8,329 ha reached on 12 Aug
    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)
12 Aug 33.4 °C 38 % 13 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
13 Aug 34.9 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Aug 35.2 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
15 Aug 33.8 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
16 Aug 33.8 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
17 Aug 35.3 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
18 Aug 35.6 °C 39 % 26 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 18
19 Aug 25.7 °C 59 % 55 km/h 14.6 mm Very low 2
20 Aug 26.9 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
21 Aug 30.6 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Aug 33.5 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Aug 34.6 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
24 Aug 35.5 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
25 Aug 35.3 °C 30 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Aug 33.9 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 20
27 Aug 34.5 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
28 Aug after 32.3 °C 52 % 26 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 4
29 Aug after 29.7 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
30 Aug after 33.1 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
31 Aug after 34.2 °C 35 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
1 Sept after 36.2 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
2 Sept after 36.5 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
3 Sept after 34.4 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Sept after 33.7 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Sept after 34.5 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Sept after 35.9 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Sept after 35.9 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Sept after 36.5 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
9 Sept after 36.5 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
10 Sept after 36.0 °C 42 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
11 Sept after 28.6 °C 59 % 24 km/h 6.2 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Aug 2022
After · 3 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 26 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 1,628 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 863: 58 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,628 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM102,325 µg/m³
Optical depth5.31
101112131415161718192021222324252627282930
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 · 1,092Every 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 Lábrea fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 August 2022 and 27 August 2022: 16 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 8,260 hectares (82.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lábrea (8,329 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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

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.