How long did the Manicoré fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 August 2020 to 8 September 2020 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 August 2020 to 6 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,149 hectares (41.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Manicoré (4,187 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2020-08-25 → 2020-09-08

Manicoré fire, 25 August 2020 Manicoré

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2020, 16:51 UTC

The fire started on 25 August 2020 in Manicoré, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,149 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 237th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 629 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Manicoré · 2018 Manicoré · 2024 Novo Aripuanã · 2024 Manicoré · 2020

Burnt area: 4,149ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 25 Aug 2020 – 8 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 25 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 245; in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 143MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Aug8 Sept

Play back 8 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

25 Aug 28 Aug 31 Aug 3 Sept 6 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

38°high

42km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 10 Sept.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 920 ha in 2016, 2,279 ha in 2017, 3,805 ha in 2018, 1,293 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,763 ha that had burned before.

3,134 ha Manicoré fire, August 2018 5,266 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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

Manicoré where it started

4,187 ha reached on 25 Aug

0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
18 Aug	37.2 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
19 Aug	36.8 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
20 Aug	35.4 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Aug	27.2 °C	49 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
22 Aug	28.0 °C	41 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
23 Aug	32.8 °C	38 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
24 Aug	33.4 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
25 Aug	33.5 °C	40 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Aug	34.5 °C	43 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
27 Aug	35.4 °C	40 %	17 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
28 Aug	34.0 °C	48 %	24 km/h	7.1 mm	Low 6
29 Aug	34.3 °C	49 %	26 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 15
30 Aug	34.4 °C	45 %	24 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 20
31 Aug	34.1 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
1 Sept	35.7 °C	39 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
2 Sept	34.6 °C	41 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
3 Sept	34.9 °C	35 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
4 Sept	35.3 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.4 mm	High 27
5 Sept	36.5 °C	29 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Sept	36.5 °C	27 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Sept	37.6 °C	25 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Sept	36.9 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
9 Sept after	35.9 °C	37 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Sept after	34.4 °C	49 %	35 km/h	3.4 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Aug 2020

After · 15 Sept 2020

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 245Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Manicoré fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 August 2020 to 8 September 2020 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 August 2020 to 6 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,149 hectares (41.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Manicoré (4,187 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 6 September 2020 → 8 September 2020.

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.

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What really happened?

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 August 2020 to 6 September 2020. 245 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.

Where it burned