Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Lábrea fire, 30 August 2022 Lábrea, Porto Velho

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2022, 18:32 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2022 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,346 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 370th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 566 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lábrea · 2021Lábrea · 2017Lábrea · 2019Lábrea · 2022

Burnt area
3,346ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
30 Aug 2022 – 14 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
30 Aug
2022
Heat detections
260
in a single hotspot: 129 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
230MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug14 Sept
14 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 2022 · 78 MW · 4 31 Aug 2022 · 586 MW · 19 1 Sept 2022 · 577 MW · 40 2 Sept 2022 · 1,080 MW · 81 3 Sept 2022 · 190 MW · 39 4 Sept 2022 · 254 MW · 18 5 Sept 2022 · 134 MW · 24 6 Sept 2022 · 172 MW · 18 7 Sept 2022 · 19 MW · 2 9 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 10 Sept 2022 · 6 MW · 1 12 Sept 2022 · 49 MW · 2 13 Sept 2022 · 2 MW · 2 14 Sept 2022 · 70 MW · 9
30 Aug 1 Sept 2 Sept 3 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 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

35°high
40km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.7 mm on 15 Sept.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 402 ha in 2016, 1,646 ha in 2017, 620 ha in 2018, 1,642 ha in 2019, 3,379 ha in 2020, 1,860 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,115 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Lábrea 45,448 inhabitants where it started
    2,959 ha reached on 30 Aug
    0.0 %
  2. Porto Velho 460,434 inhabitants
    417 ha reached on 2 Sept
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
23 Aug 32.8 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
24 Aug 33.9 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
25 Aug 34.4 °C 33 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
26 Aug 33.6 °C 45 % 19 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 18
27 Aug 33.8 °C 46 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
28 Aug 31.5 °C 62 % 25 km/h 1.9 mm Very low 4
29 Aug 29.2 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
30 Aug 31.4 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
31 Aug 33.0 °C 38 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
1 Sept 34.7 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
2 Sept 34.7 °C 37 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Sept 33.4 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
4 Sept 32.6 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Sept 33.4 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Sept 34.3 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Sept 33.9 °C 38 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Sept 35.3 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
9 Sept 34.8 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
10 Sept 35.2 °C 43 % 24 km/h 0.3 mm High 27
11 Sept 27.6 °C 66 % 24 km/h 4.6 mm Very low 1
12 Sept 33.7 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm Low 9
13 Sept 35.3 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
14 Sept 34.2 °C 43 % 27 km/h 4.5 mm Low 7
15 Sept after 25.7 °C 60 % 35 km/h 7.7 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2022
After · 21 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 28 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 592 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 420: 28 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak592 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10848 µg/m³
Optical depth3.75
2829303112345678910
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 · 260Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2022 to 14 September 2022 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 August 2022 to 7 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,346 hectares (33.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lábrea (2,959 ha, 0.0 %); Porto Velho (417 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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: 7 September 2022 → 14 September 2022.

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 30 August 2022 to 7 September 2022. 260 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 2020, 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.