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Abyei PCA area fire, 28 November 2017 Abyei PCA area

Out · last detection 28 Dec 2017, 11:19 UTC

The fire started on 28 November 2017 in Abyei PCA area, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 30,332 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Abyei PCA since 2016 (of 91 with a page). The largest in Sudan in 2017, of 137.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Abyei PCA area · 2016Abyei PCA area · 2016Abyei PCA area · 2021Abyei PCA area · 2017

Burnt area
30,332ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
28 Nov 2017 – 28 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
1
localities
Started on
28 Nov
2017
Heat detections
912
in a single hotspot: 264 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
284MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Nov28 Dec
28 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

28 Nov 2017 · 156 MW · 16 29 Nov 2017 · 127 MW · 25 30 Nov 2017 · 135 MW · 12 1 Dec 2017 · 123 MW · 24 2 Dec 2017 · 151 MW · 32 3 Dec 2017 · 158 MW · 29 4 Dec 2017 · 648 MW · 49 5 Dec 2017 · 168 MW · 32 6 Dec 2017 · 150 MW · 31 7 Dec 2017 · 938 MW · 165 8 Dec 2017 · 412 MW · 91 9 Dec 2017 · 251 MW · 70 10 Dec 2017 · 707 MW · 65 11 Dec 2017 · 269 MW · 25 12 Dec 2017 · 131 MW · 31 13 Dec 2017 · 16 MW · 3 15 Dec 2017 · 96 MW · 29 16 Dec 2017 · 305 MW · 24 17 Dec 2017 · 191 MW · 32 18 Dec 2017 · 259 MW · 21 19 Dec 2017 · 54 MW · 9 20 Dec 2017 · 2,193 MW · 60 21 Dec 2017 · 98 MW · 14 22 Dec 2017 · 11 MW · 2 24 Dec 2017 · 170 MW · 16 26 Dec 2017 · 8 MW · 2 27 Dec 2017 · 8 MW · 2 28 Dec 2017 · 6 MW · 1
28 Nov 2 Dec 6 Dec 10 Dec 15 Dec 19 Dec 20 Dec 24 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
44km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,523 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (303 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. Abyei PCA area where it started
    30,508 ha reached on 28 Nov
    2.9 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
28 Nov 37.7 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Nov 38.1 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Nov 38.3 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
1 Dec 37.4 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
2 Dec 37.5 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
3 Dec 38.3 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Dec 38.9 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
5 Dec 39.3 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
6 Dec 39.3 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Dec 38.5 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
8 Dec 37.0 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
9 Dec 38.0 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Dec 38.8 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
11 Dec 39.8 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Dec 39.5 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
13 Dec 39.0 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Dec 38.3 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
15 Dec 37.3 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
16 Dec 37.5 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
17 Dec 37.6 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
18 Dec 38.5 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 Dec 38.8 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
20 Dec 39.6 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Dec 40.2 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
22 Dec 39.8 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Dec 39.9 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Dec 39.4 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
25 Dec 36.8 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
26 Dec 36.1 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
27 Dec 36.7 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Dec 38.8 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
29 Dec after 39.6 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
30 Dec after 39.1 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
31 Dec after 36.0 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
1 Jan after 32.1 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
2 Jan after 31.3 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
3 Jan after 32.1 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
4 Jan after 32.6 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
5 Jan after 31.9 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
6 Jan after 32.9 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Jan after 33.8 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Nov 2017
After · 4 Jan 2018

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 · 912Every 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 Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Abyei PCA area fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 November 2017 to 28 December 2017 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 November 2017 to 21 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 30,332 hectares (303.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Abyei PCA area (30,508 ha, 2.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sudan (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

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: 21 December 2017 → 28 December 2017.
  2. Start date: 29 November 2017 → 28 November 2017.

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 November 2017 to 21 December 2017. 912 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 2015, 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.