Skip to content
worldfires
BR · Brazil · →

Paranatinga fire, 3 September 2022 Paranatinga

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2022, 17:27 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2022 in Paranatinga, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,687 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1173th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 324 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Burnt area
4,687ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
3 Sept 2022 – 12 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2022
Heat detections
221
in a single hotspot: 168 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept12 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

356789101112

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
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.9 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Paranatinga 26,423 inhabitants where it started
    4,722 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.2 %

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)
27 Aug 35.8 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Aug 35.7 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Aug 34.4 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Aug 34.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Aug 35.0 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Sept 34.9 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Sept 34.5 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Sept 35.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 34.2 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept 36.4 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Sept 36.6 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Sept 35.3 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Sept 36.0 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Sept 36.6 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Sept 37.0 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Sept 36.7 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept 38.1 °C 18 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Sept after 37.7 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Sept after 34.4 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.7 mm High 33
15 Sept after 29.8 °C 51 % 37 km/h 4.5 mm Low 8
16 Sept after 34.3 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Sept after 36.1 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Sept after 35.3 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
19 Sept after 32.2 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
20 Sept after 35.0 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
21 Sept after 35.2 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm High 31
22 Sept after 33.0 °C 47 % 37 km/h 6.9 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2022
After · 19 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 12 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 109 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 71: 4.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak109 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM10156 µg/m³
Optical depth1.51
123456789101112131415
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 · 221Every 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 Paranatinga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2022 and 12 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 4,687 hectares (46.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Paranatinga (4,722 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

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
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.

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.