Ababo fire, 22 February 2024 Ababo, Baso Liben
The fire started on 22 February 2024 in Ababo, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,240 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 99th largest in Oromia since 2016 (of 264 with a page). Number 28 in Ethiopia in 2024, of 87.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Ababo · 2016Ababo · 2019Ababo · 2021Ababo · 2017
- Burnt area
- 3,240ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 22 Feb 2024 – 26 Feb 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 22 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 106
- in a single hotspot: 110 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 220MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,727 ha in 2016, 1,725 ha in 2017, 539 ha in 2018, 2,312 ha in 2019, 1,492 ha in 2020, 2,985 ha in 2021, 646 ha in 2022, 1,109 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,059 ha that had burned before.
- 1,727 ha Ababo fire, December 2016 2,308 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,532 ha Ababo fire, January 2019 2,878 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,458 ha Ababo fire, January 2021 2,076 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,318 ha Ababo fire, December 2017 2,006 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 507 ha Baso Liben fire, January 2021 4,476 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Ababo where it started3,145 ha reached on 20 Feb3.1 %
-
117 ha reached on 24 Feb0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Feb | 35.1 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 23 Feb | 35.6 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 24 Feb | 35.5 °C | 12 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 25 Feb | 36.0 °C | 13 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 26 Feb | 35.9 °C | 16 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 27 Feb after | 36.1 °C | 15 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Feb after | 35.9 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 29 Feb after | 36.5 °C | 10 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Mar after | 35.4 °C | 11 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 2 Mar after | 36.1 °C | 9 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 3 Mar after | 37.8 °C | 10 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 4 Mar after | 36.3 °C | 11 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 5 Mar after | 36.3 °C | 18 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 6 Mar after | 36.6 °C | 23 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 7 Mar after | 36.0 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 34 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 29 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 106Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ababo fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 February 2024 and 26 February 2024: 5 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 3,240 hectares (32.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ababo (3,145 ha, 3.1 %); Baso Liben (117 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 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 Ethiopia (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.
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
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. 106 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.
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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.