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Poxoréu fire, August 2022 Poxoréu, General Carneiro, Novo São Joaquim

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2022, 17:08 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2022 in Poxoréu, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,130 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 1365th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 398 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: General Carneiro · 2019General Carneiro · 2023General Carneiro · 2026Novo São Joaquim · 2020

Burnt area
4,130ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
26 Aug 2022 – 13 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
26 Aug
2022
Heat detections
150
in a single hotspot: 333 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
149MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug13 Sept
13 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

26 Aug 2022 · 29 MW · 3 27 Aug 2022 · 26 MW · 4 28 Aug 2022 · 23 MW · 4 29 Aug 2022 · 98 MW · 5 31 Aug 2022 · 13 MW · 2 1 Sept 2022 · 4 MW · 1 2 Sept 2022 · 21 MW · 7 3 Sept 2022 · 722 MW · 7 4 Sept 2022 · 150 MW · 15 5 Sept 2022 · 728 MW · 28 6 Sept 2022 · 264 MW · 25 7 Sept 2022 · 166 MW · 19 8 Sept 2022 · 104 MW · 16 9 Sept 2022 · 38 MW · 6 10 Sept 2022 · 21 MW · 4 12 Sept 2022 · 24 MW · 2 13 Sept 2022 · 109 MW · 2
26 Aug 29 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 12 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
46km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 14 ha in 2016, 162 ha in 2017, 2,004 ha in 2019, 858 ha in 2020, 16 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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. Poxoréu 23,283 inhabitants where it started
    3,890 ha reached on 26 Aug
    0.6 %
  2. General Carneiro 6,037 inhabitants
    233 ha reached on 7 Sept
    0.1 %
  3. Novo São Joaquim 6,919 inhabitants
    22 ha
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
26 Aug 34.7 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Aug 34.5 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Aug 35.1 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Aug 34.1 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Aug 33.8 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Aug 33.5 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Sept 34.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
2 Sept 33.5 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Sept 34.3 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 33.5 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Sept 35.0 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Sept 35.3 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Sept 34.9 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
8 Sept 35.3 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Sept 36.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Sept 36.5 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Sept 36.0 °C 15 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Sept 37.1 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Sept 37.4 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept after 34.7 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Sept after 29.5 °C 49 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
16 Sept after 34.5 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept after 36.0 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept after 35.9 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Sept after 31.6 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
20 Sept after 34.8 °C 32 % 32 km/h 3.7 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Aug 2022
After · 20 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 13 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 57 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak57 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1082 µg/m³
Optical depth0.93
3112345678910111213
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 · 150Every 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 Poxoréu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2022 to 13 September 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2022 to 10 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,130 hectares (41.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Poxoréu (3,890 ha, 0.6 %); General Carneiro (233 ha, 0.1 %); Novo São Joaquim (22 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 46 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: 10 September 2022 → 13 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 2 September 2022 → 26 August 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2022 to 10 September 2022. 150 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.