Lábrea fire, 1 September 2022 Lábrea
The fire started on 1 September 2022 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,043 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 430th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 669 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lábrea · 2019Lábrea · 2021Lábrea · 2020Lábrea · 2019
- Burnt area
- 3,043ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 1 Sept 2022 – 10 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 1 Sept
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 175
- in a single hotspot: 119 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 158MW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 20 Sept.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 549 ha in 2016, 1,077 ha in 2017, 1,657 ha in 2018, 4,247 ha in 2019, 3,202 ha in 2020, 5,379 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,055 ha that had burned before.
- 4,043 ha Lábrea fire, July 2019 8,363 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,737 ha Lábrea fire, August 2021 7,003 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,475 ha Lábrea fire, July 2020 4,021 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
-
3,072 ha reached on 25 Aug0.0 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Aug | 35.5 °C | 30 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 26 Aug | 33.8 °C | 44 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 27 Aug | 35.4 °C | 46 % | 24 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 28 Aug | 35.3 °C | 43 % | 22 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 29 Aug | 28.4 °C | 41 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 30 Aug | 32.8 °C | 32 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 31 Aug | 34.3 °C | 35 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 1 Sept | 35.7 °C | 35 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 2 Sept | 37.3 °C | 29 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 3 Sept | 34.2 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 4 Sept | 33.2 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 5 Sept | 34.0 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Sept | 35.6 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Sept | 35.8 °C | 30 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 8 Sept | 36.4 °C | 38 % | 37 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 33 |
| 9 Sept | 36.5 °C | 40 % | 26 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 31 |
| 10 Sept | 35.8 °C | 43 % | 22 km/h | 1.7 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 11 Sept after | 25.7 °C | 81 % | 19 km/h | 19.1 mm | Very low 0 |
| 12 Sept after | 33.6 °C | 48 % | 19 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 4 |
| 13 Sept after | 35.9 °C | 41 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 14 Sept after | 35.4 °C | 45 % | 28 km/h | 4.2 mm | Low 7 |
| 15 Sept after | 25.2 °C | 59 % | 41 km/h | 7.5 mm | Very low 1 |
| 16 Sept after | 31.6 °C | 42 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 17 Sept after | 35.4 °C | 38 % | 19 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 18 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 44 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 19 Sept after | 35.5 °C | 45 % | 27 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 20 Sept after | 35.3 °C | 43 % | 26 km/h | 1.9 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 2 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 244 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 158: 11 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 · 175Every 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 1 September 2022 and 10 September 2022: 10 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 3,043 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lábrea (3,072 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 41 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 · 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.
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. 175 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.