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Lábrea fire, 9 August 2022 Lábrea

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2022, 18:07 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2022 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,762 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 19 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lábrea · 2019Lábrea · 2021Lábrea · 2021Lábrea · 2020

Burnt area
26,762ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
33days
9 Aug 2022 – 10 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Aug
2022
Heat detections
3,168
in a single hotspot: 335 MW
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug10 Sept
10 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 2022 · 300 MW · 52 12 Aug 2022 · 615 MW · 50 13 Aug 2022 · 1,345 MW · 122 14 Aug 2022 · 274 MW · 73 15 Aug 2022 · 1,401 MW · 123 16 Aug 2022 · 274 MW · 70 17 Aug 2022 · 795 MW · 78 18 Aug 2022 · 492 MW · 74 19 Aug 2022 · 71 MW · 29 20 Aug 2022 · 1,848 MW · 194 21 Aug 2022 · 4,666 MW · 180 22 Aug 2022 · 3,972 MW · 230 23 Aug 2022 · 5,178 MW · 263 24 Aug 2022 · 2,217 MW · 220 25 Aug 2022 · 2,598 MW · 289 26 Aug 2022 · 335 MW · 68 27 Aug 2022 · 1,665 MW · 141 30 Aug 2022 · 535 MW · 45 31 Aug 2022 · 1,125 MW · 97 1 Sept 2022 · 1,467 MW · 79 2 Sept 2022 · 341 MW · 58 3 Sept 2022 · 220 MW · 44 4 Sept 2022 · 882 MW · 57 5 Sept 2022 · 1,687 MW · 102 6 Sept 2022 · 1,054 MW · 106 7 Sept 2022 · 996 MW · 55 8 Sept 2022 · 455 MW · 59 9 Sept 2022 · 1,613 MW · 121 10 Sept 2022 · 340 MW · 89
11 Aug 16 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug 26 Aug 2 Sept 7 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

37°high
55km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.8 mm on 11 Sept.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,489 ha in 2016, 1,696 ha in 2017, 5,316 ha in 2018, 9,536 ha in 2019, 20,172 ha in 2020, 22,779 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 23,415 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (268 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
    27,002 ha reached on 11 Aug
    0.4 %

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 area0.29 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.29 hectares of 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)
9 Aug 35.0 °C 43 % 31 km/h 7.5 mm Very low 4
10 Aug 25.3 °C 53 % 40 km/h 1.4 mm Low 6
11 Aug 30.3 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
12 Aug 33.5 °C 38 % 13 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
13 Aug 34.7 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
14 Aug 35.4 °C 42 % 20 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
15 Aug 34.1 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
16 Aug 33.7 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 20
17 Aug 35.0 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 20
18 Aug 35.7 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 21
19 Aug 26.4 °C 57 % 55 km/h 14.1 mm Very low 2
20 Aug 26.8 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
21 Aug 30.2 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Aug 33.3 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Aug 34.1 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
24 Aug 34.9 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
25 Aug 35.1 °C 31 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
26 Aug 34.0 °C 44 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
27 Aug 34.7 °C 46 % 23 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 20
28 Aug 33.7 °C 48 % 26 km/h 2.1 mm Low 7
29 Aug 28.9 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Aug 32.7 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
31 Aug 33.9 °C 36 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Sept 35.9 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Sept 36.6 °C 31 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Sept 34.0 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
4 Sept 33.3 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Sept 34.1 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Sept 35.9 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Sept 35.8 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Sept 36.2 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
9 Sept 36.4 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
10 Sept 35.5 °C 44 % 20 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 13
11 Sept after 26.6 °C 77 % 23 km/h 16.8 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Aug 2022
After · 17 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 1,542 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 946: 63 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,542 µg/m³
Days over the guideline35 days
PM102,205 µg/m³
Optical depth6.78
7891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345678910111213
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 · 3,168Every 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 9 August 2022 and 10 September 2022: 33 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 26,762 hectares (267.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lábrea (27,002 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 55 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 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3,168 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.