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Aboudéia fire, 14 December 2020 Aboudéia

Out · last detection 21 Dec 2020, 12:41 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2020 in Aboudéia, Chad, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,672 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 283th largest in Salamat since 2016 (of 574 with a page). Number 100 in Chad in 2020, of 175.

Burnt area
2,672ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
14 Dec 2020 – 21 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
14 Dec
2020
Heat detections
64
in a single hotspot: 71 MW
Energy released
1.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Dec 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec21 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

1415161718192021

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

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 26 ha in 2016, 731 ha in 2017, 2,552 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,339 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Aboudéia where it started
    2,685 ha reached on 14 Dec
    0.2 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Dec 2020
After · 28 Dec 2020

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 · 64Every 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 Chad ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aboudéia fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 December 2020 and 21 December 2020: 8 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 2,672 hectares (26.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aboudéia (2,685 ha, 0.2 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chad (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.

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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.