Lábrea fire, 21 August 2022 Lábrea
The fire started on 21 August 2022 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,480 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 60th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 149 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lábrea · 2020Lábrea · 2021Lábrea · 2021Lábrea · 2022
- Burnt area
- 8,480ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 21 Aug 2022 – 28 Aug 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Aug
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 613
- in a single hotspot: 1,006 MW
- Danger at start
- 8
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.4GW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 10 Sept.
This area had burned before
56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,646 ha in 2017, 1,759 ha in 2018, 2,847 ha in 2019, 3,523 ha in 2020, 3,263 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,715 ha that had burned before.
- 1,871 ha Lábrea fire, August 2020 5,190 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,437 ha Lábrea fire, July 2021 3,901 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,097 ha Lábrea fire, August 2021 4,458 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
-
8,553 ha reached on 22 Aug0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Aug | 26.7 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 21 Aug | 30.1 °C | 33 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 22 Aug | 33.2 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 23 Aug | 34.0 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 24 Aug | 34.8 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 25 Aug | 35.0 °C | 31 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 26 Aug | 33.9 °C | 44 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 27 Aug | 34.6 °C | 46 % | 23 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 28 Aug | 33.6 °C | 48 % | 26 km/h | 2.1 mm | Low 7 |
| 29 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 42 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 30 Aug after | 32.6 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 31 Aug after | 33.8 °C | 36 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 1 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 32 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 2 Sept after | 36.5 °C | 31 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 3 Sept after | 33.9 °C | 39 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 4 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 34 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 5 Sept after | 34.0 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 6 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 7 Sept after | 35.7 °C | 31 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 8 Sept after | 36.1 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 39 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 10 Sept after | 35.4 °C | 44 % | 20 km/h | 1.8 mm | Moderate 13 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 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).
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 · 613Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,175 haLábrea12 August 2022 · 17 days · 14 km away
- 26,762 haLábrea9 August 2022 · 33 days · 25 km away
- 43,699 haLábrea13 July 2024 · 54 days · 29 km away
- 10,926 haLábrea23 July 2024 · 24 days · 29 km away
- 9,059 haLábrea6 August 2019 · 17 days · 34 km away
- 9,275 haLábrea23 August 2025 · 11 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lábrea fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 August 2022 and 28 August 2022: 8 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 8,480 hectares (84.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lábrea (8,553 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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
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. 613 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.