Lábrea fire, 7 August 2024 Lábrea
The fire started on 7 August 2024 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,888 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 53th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 370 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.
- Burnt area
- 8,888ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 7 Aug 2024 – 28 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 7 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 751
- in a single hotspot: 653 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 10.6GW
- sum of detected power
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 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 5 Sept.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,802 ha in 2016, 4,477 ha in 2017, 5,953 ha in 2018, 7,798 ha in 2019, 2,526 ha in 2020, 6,412 ha in 2021, 6,568 ha in 2022, 1,743 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,485 ha that had burned before.
- 6,412 ha Lábrea fire, August 2021 27,355 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,900 ha Lábrea fire, August 2017 4,122 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,350 ha Lábrea fire, August 2019 4,995 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,210 ha Lábrea fire, September 2022 3,715 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
8,951 ha reached on 7 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Aug | 34.1 °C | 44 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 8 Aug | 36.0 °C | 33 % | 20 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Aug | 29.7 °C | 55 % | 38 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 21 |
| 10 Aug | 27.9 °C | 41 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 11 Aug | 30.8 °C | 34 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 12 Aug | 33.7 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 13 Aug | 33.7 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 14 Aug | 34.1 °C | 27 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 15 Aug | 36.2 °C | 26 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 16 Aug | 36.5 °C | 32 % | 19 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Aug | 33.3 °C | 42 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Aug | 36.0 °C | 36 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 19 Aug | 37.3 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Aug | 37.2 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 33 |
| 21 Aug | 35.2 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Aug | 37.1 °C | 31 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 23 Aug | 37.8 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 24 Aug | 39.1 °C | 24 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 25 Aug | 31.1 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Aug | 28.6 °C | 30 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 27 Aug | 32.5 °C | 28 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 28 Aug | 34.5 °C | 29 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Aug after | 36.2 °C | 29 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 30 Aug after | 35.2 °C | 36 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 31 Aug after | 37.4 °C | 29 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 1 Sept after | 37.5 °C | 28 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 2 Sept after | 35.9 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 3 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 36 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Sept after | 36.9 °C | 41 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 5 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 57 % | 30 km/h | 4.0 mm | Low 7 |
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 30 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 281 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 176: 12 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 · 751Every 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 7 August 2024 and 28 August 2024: 22 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 8,888 hectares (88.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lábrea (8,951 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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
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.