Lábrea fire, 25 August 2022 Lábrea
The fire started on 25 August 2022 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,125 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 13th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 38 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lábrea · 2021Lábrea · 2016Lábrea · 2018Lábrea · 2020
- Burnt area
- 19,125ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 25 Aug 2022 – 10 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 25 Aug
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 1,965
- in a single hotspot: 488 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.8GW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 19 Sept.
This area had burned before
84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,189 ha in 2016, 6,447 ha in 2017, 9,954 ha in 2018, 8,305 ha in 2019, 11,298 ha in 2020, 10,300 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,125 ha that had burned before.
- 4,659 ha Lábrea fire, August 2021 27,355 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,801 ha Lábrea fire, July 2016 4,633 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,959 ha Lábrea fire, August 2018 3,083 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,890 ha Lábrea fire, August 2020 3,635 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,795 ha Lábrea fire, August 2019 6,568 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,762 ha Lábrea fire, August 2021 3,965 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 690 ha Lábrea fire, August 2019 3,036 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 687 ha Lábrea fire, September 2020 4,238 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
-
19,270 ha reached on 18 Aug0.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Aug | 35.3 °C | 44 % | 27 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 19 Aug | 25.4 °C | 59 % | 56 km/h | 5.5 mm | Very low 4 |
| 20 Aug | 27.8 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 21 Aug | 31.0 °C | 31 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 22 Aug | 33.7 °C | 29 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 23 Aug | 35.1 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 24 Aug | 35.6 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 25 Aug | 35.8 °C | 29 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 26 Aug | 34.2 °C | 44 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 27 Aug | 35.1 °C | 44 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 23 |
| 28 Aug | 35.3 °C | 42 % | 27 km/h | 1.6 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 29 Aug | 29.6 °C | 42 % | 38 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 30 Aug | 33.1 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 31 Aug | 34.5 °C | 35 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 1 Sept | 36.0 °C | 33 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 2 Sept | 37.4 °C | 28 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 3 Sept | 34.8 °C | 39 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 4 Sept | 34.0 °C | 33 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Sept | 34.2 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 6 Sept | 36.0 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Sept | 36.2 °C | 30 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 8 Sept | 36.3 °C | 36 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 9 Sept | 36.5 °C | 39 % | 26 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 31 |
| 10 Sept | 36.0 °C | 43 % | 22 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 27 |
| 11 Sept after | 27.4 °C | 77 % | 22 km/h | 14.6 mm | Very low 0 |
| 12 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 48 % | 18 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 4 |
| 13 Sept after | 36.0 °C | 41 % | 24 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 14 Sept after | 35.9 °C | 44 % | 24 km/h | 3.6 mm | Low 7 |
| 15 Sept after | 25.1 °C | 67 % | 42 km/h | 22.7 mm | Very low 0 |
| 16 Sept after | 31.3 °C | 46 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 17 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 44 % | 21 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 10 |
| 18 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 52 % | 26 km/h | 0.5 mm | Low 11 |
| 19 Sept after | 34.6 °C | 50 % | 25 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 9 |
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 792 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 510: 34 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 · 1,965Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lábrea fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 August 2022 and 10 September 2022: 17 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 19,125 hectares (191.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lábrea (19,270 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,965 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.