How long did the Tapauá fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 August 2021 and 13 August 2021: 6 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 4,440 hectares (44.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Tapauá (4,475 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 30 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.

BR · Brazil · 2021-08-08 → 2021-08-13

Tapauá fire, 8 August 2021 Tapauá

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2021, 17:35 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2021 in Tapauá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,440 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 202th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 472 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tapauá · 2024 Tapauá · 2021 Humaitá · 2022 Humaitá · 2024

Burnt area: 4,440ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 8 Aug 2021 – 13 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 8 Aug; 2021
Heat detections: 410; in a single hotspot: 229 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug13 Aug

Play back 13 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

8 Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug 11 Aug 12 Aug 13 Aug

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

30km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 39 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 19 Aug.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,355 ha in 2018, 1,241 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,477 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (44 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

Tapauá 19,599 inhabitants where it started

4,475 ha reached on 8 Aug

0.0 %

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)
8 Aug	35.4 °C	40 %	24 km/h	0.5 mm	High 30
9 Aug	36.4 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
10 Aug	35.7 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Aug	36.4 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
12 Aug	37.5 °C	24 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Aug	35.2 °C	29 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
14 Aug after	33.6 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Aug after	35.0 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
16 Aug after	35.5 °C	41 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
17 Aug after	36.2 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
18 Aug after	37.0 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
19 Aug after	36.0 °C	30 %	29 km/h	1.9 mm	High 22

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Aug 2021

After · 20 Aug 2021

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 410Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tapauá fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 August 2021 and 13 August 2021: 6 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 4,440 hectares (44.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Tapauá (4,475 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 30 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

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 410 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.

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.

Where it burned