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Pium fire, July 2024 Pium

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2024, 17:46 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2024 in Pium, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,578 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 395th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 495 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Burnt area
6,578ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
17 Jul 2024 – 31 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
17 Jul
2024
Heat detections
166
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

30 Jul 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul31 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

1718192021222330

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high
40km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 83 ha in 2016, 3,438 ha in 2017, 2,185 ha in 2019, 2,728 ha in 2020, 234 ha in 2021, 2,806 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,705 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Pium 7,128 inhabitants where it started
    6,627 ha reached on 17 Jul
    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)
17 Jul 33.7 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Jul 34.4 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Jul 34.5 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Jul 34.2 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Jul 33.3 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Jul 33.7 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Jul 34.6 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Jul 34.6 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Jul 34.3 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jul 34.4 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Jul 34.8 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jul 35.0 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Jul 35.5 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Jul 36.3 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul 36.4 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Aug after 35.5 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Aug after 34.8 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Aug after 34.1 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Aug after 34.0 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Aug after 34.3 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Aug after 34.5 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Aug after 35.0 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Aug after 35.6 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Aug after 36.8 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Aug after 35.0 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Aug after 35.7 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Aug after 37.5 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Aug after 37.4 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Aug after 35.1 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Aug after 35.1 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Aug after 37.2 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Aug after 36.9 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2024
After · 7 Aug 2024

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 19 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 53 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak53 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1076 µg/m³
Optical depth0.59
1516171819202122232425262728293031123
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 · 166Every 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 Pium fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 July 2024 and 31 July 2024: 15 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 6,578 hectares (65.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pium (6,627 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.