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Parnarama fire, October 2023 Parnarama

Out · last detection 29 Oct 2023, 17:04 UTC

The fire started on 10 October 2023 in Parnarama, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,293 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 505th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 377 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Parnarama · 2020Buriti Bravo · 2017

Burnt area
3,293ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
10 Oct 2023 – 29 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Oct
2023
Heat detections
174
in a single hotspot: 71 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
117MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Oct29 Oct
29 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

10 Oct 2023 · 143 MW · 32 11 Oct 2023 · 30 MW · 16 13 Oct 2023 · 36 MW · 4 14 Oct 2023 · 34 MW · 3 15 Oct 2023 · 4 MW · 1 17 Oct 2023 · 18 MW · 3 18 Oct 2023 · 60 MW · 5 19 Oct 2023 · 53 MW · 4 20 Oct 2023 · 59 MW · 6 21 Oct 2023 · 130 MW · 25 22 Oct 2023 · 23 MW · 11 23 Oct 2023 · 1,072 MW · 43 24 Oct 2023 · 48 MW · 6 26 Oct 2023 · 52 MW · 7 27 Oct 2023 · 60 MW · 5 29 Oct 2023 · 45 MW · 3
10 Oct 14 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 23 Oct 24 Oct 29 Oct

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
40km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 6 Nov.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,185 ha in 2016, 1,094 ha in 2017, 317 ha in 2018, 2,635 ha in 2020, 886 ha in 2021, 897 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,301 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Parnarama 31,250 inhabitants where it started
    3,316 ha reached on 10 Oct
    1.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
10 Oct 36.7 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
11 Oct 34.8 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
12 Oct 35.0 °C 43 % 22 km/h 2.3 mm Moderate 14
13 Oct 37.2 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
14 Oct 38.3 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Oct 35.3 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
16 Oct 34.6 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
17 Oct 37.2 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
18 Oct 37.3 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Oct 36.0 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
20 Oct 37.3 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
21 Oct 37.7 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Oct 36.2 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Oct 36.8 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Oct 35.0 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
25 Oct 36.5 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
26 Oct 37.6 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Oct 37.4 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Oct 37.3 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Oct 37.1 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Oct after 38.4 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Oct after 37.8 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Nov after 34.3 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
2 Nov after 35.4 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
3 Nov after 34.5 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
4 Nov after 35.9 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.6 mm High 25
5 Nov after 35.2 °C 43 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
6 Nov after 29.4 °C 62 % 22 km/h 2.3 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Oct 2023
After · 5 Nov 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 24 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak64 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM1092 µg/m³
Optical depth0.85
12131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 174Every 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 Parnarama fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 October 2023 to 29 October 2023 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 October 2023 to 24 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,293 hectares (32.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Parnarama (3,316 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 ›

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: 24 October 2023 → 29 October 2023.
  2. Start date: 14 October 2023 → 10 October 2023.

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 14 October 2023 to 24 October 2023. 174 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 2025, 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.