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Monte do Carmo fire, 6 September 2016 Monte do Carmo

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2016, 16:37 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2016 in Monte do Carmo, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,954 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 463th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 207 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Palmas · 2017Monte do Carmo · 2022Monte do Carmo · 2024Monte do Carmo · 2019

Burnt area
5,954ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
6 Sept 2016 – 19 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Sept
2016
Heat detections
171
in a single hotspot: 165 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
183MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept19 Sept
19 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 2016 · 2 MW · 1 11 Sept 2016 · 31 MW · 7 12 Sept 2016 · 350 MW · 52 13 Sept 2016 · 67 MW · 18 14 Sept 2016 · 658 MW · 36 15 Sept 2016 · 534 MW · 20 16 Sept 2016 · 72 MW · 21 17 Sept 2016 · 7 MW · 3 18 Sept 2016 · 106 MW · 12 19 Sept 2016 · 5 MW · 1
8 Sept 12 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 18 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
50km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.6 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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

  1. Monte do Carmo 5,694 inhabitants where it started
    5,987 ha reached on 8 Sept
    1.6 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.54 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.54 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
6 Sept 37.0 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Sept 38.1 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Sept 37.8 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 36.9 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Sept 37.6 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Sept 37.3 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Sept 37.3 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Sept 36.6 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Sept 38.2 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Sept 38.3 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Sept 37.3 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept 37.0 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept 35.7 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Sept 37.5 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Sept after 35.9 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Sept after 37.4 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Sept after 33.5 °C 46 % 31 km/h 3.6 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2016
After · 26 Sept 2016

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 · 171Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Monte do Carmo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2016 to 19 September 2016 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2016 to 18 September 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,954 hectares (59.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Monte do Carmo (5,987 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
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.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 11 September 2016 to 18 September 2016. 171 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 2015, 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.