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Paranatinga fire, 4 August 2023 Paranatinga

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2023, 17:09 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2023 in Paranatinga, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,795 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 231th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 22 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Burnt area
16,795ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
4 Aug 2023 – 15 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
4 Aug
2023
Heat detections
1,271
in a single hotspot: 372 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
20.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Aug 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug15 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

456789101112131415

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
40km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 27 Aug.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,975 ha in 2017, 6,059 ha in 2019, 11,076 ha in 2020, 4,696 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,433 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Paranatinga 26,423 inhabitants where it started
    16,897 ha reached on 3 Aug
    0.7 %

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)
3 Aug 34.4 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Aug 34.2 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Aug 35.3 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Aug 35.7 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Aug 35.4 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Aug 36.4 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Aug 36.6 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Aug 35.3 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Aug 35.2 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Aug 35.8 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Aug 35.8 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Aug 33.6 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Aug 33.1 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Aug after 33.4 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Aug after 33.5 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Aug after 35.1 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Aug after 32.6 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Aug after 35.7 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Aug after 35.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Aug after 37.1 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Aug after 37.8 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Aug after 36.6 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Aug after 35.5 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Aug after 33.9 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
27 Aug after 33.6 °C 39 % 18 km/h 3.1 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jul 2023
After · 22 Aug 2023

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 8 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 172 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 72: 4.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak172 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10245 µg/m³
Optical depth0.93
23456789101112131415161718
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 · 1,271Every 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 4 August 2023 and 15 August 2023: 12 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 16,795 hectares (168.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Paranatinga (16,897 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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
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.