Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Monte do Carmo fire, 2 September 2022 Monte do Carmo, Porto Nacional, Palmas

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2022, 16:38 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2022 in Monte do Carmo, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,848 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 72th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 40 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Palmas · 2017Monte do Carmo · 2019Monte do Carmo · 2016Palmas · 2019

Burnt area
18,848ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
2 Sept 2022 – 20 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
2 Sept
2022
Heat detections
640
in a single hotspot: 69 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
292MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept20 Sept
20 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

2 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 5 Sept 2022 · 64 MW · 12 6 Sept 2022 · 492 MW · 17 7 Sept 2022 · 146 MW · 42 8 Sept 2022 · 1,574 MW · 183 9 Sept 2022 · 1,032 MW · 177 10 Sept 2022 · 92 MW · 9 11 Sept 2022 · 119 MW · 26 12 Sept 2022 · 63 MW · 8 13 Sept 2022 · 292 MW · 46 14 Sept 2022 · 540 MW · 63 15 Sept 2022 · 102 MW · 28 16 Sept 2022 · 30 MW · 10 17 Sept 2022 · 114 MW · 16 19 Sept 2022 · 9 MW · 1 20 Sept 2022 · 9 MW · 1
2 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 20 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

37°high
48km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,453 ha in 2016, 9,783 ha in 2017, 8,061 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,315 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (188 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
    15,310 ha reached on 2 Sept
    4.2 %
  2. Porto Nacional 64,418 inhabitants
    2,389 ha reached on 8 Sept
    0.5 %
  3. Palmas 302,692 inhabitants
    1,256 ha reached on 7 Sept
    0.6 %

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 2020
Built-up area1.4 ha
Residents≈ 90

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 90 residents (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)
2 Sept 32.7 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Sept 33.7 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 35.5 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Sept 35.2 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Sept 34.2 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Sept 33.4 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
8 Sept 33.5 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Sept 34.5 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Sept 35.5 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept 35.8 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Sept 35.6 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Sept 34.7 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Sept 34.3 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Sept 36.8 °C 17 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Sept 34.3 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Sept 33.7 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept 31.7 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.6 mm High 29
19 Sept 32.0 °C 35 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Sept 35.1 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept after 33.3 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Sept after 32.0 °C 40 % 22 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2022
After · 27 Sept 2022

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 · Copernicus

On 10 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak110 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10157 µg/m³
Optical depth0.67
34567891011121314151617181920
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 640Every 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 2 September 2022 to 20 September 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2022 to 17 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,848 hectares (188.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Monte do Carmo (15,310 ha, 4.2 %); Porto Nacional (2,389 ha, 0.5 %); Palmas (1,256 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 17 September 2022 → 20 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 5 September 2022 → 2 September 2022.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 September 2022 to 17 September 2022. 640 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.