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Ambositra fire, 3 October 2022 Ambositra

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2022, 11:17 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2022 in Ambositra, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,780 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 5th largest in Amoron'i Mania since 2016 (of 10 with a page). Number 17 in Madagascar in 2022, of 34.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ambositra · 2018Ambositra · 2025Ambositra · 2023Ambositra · 2022

Burnt area
2,780ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
3 Oct 2022 – 12 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Oct
2022
Heat detections
108
in a single hotspot: 146 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
159MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct12 Oct
12 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

3 Oct 2022 · 1 MW · 1 4 Oct 2022 · 15 MW · 6 6 Oct 2022 · 327 MW · 29 7 Oct 2022 · 158 MW · 21 8 Oct 2022 · 353 MW · 23 9 Oct 2022 · 81 MW · 7 10 Oct 2022 · 78 MW · 8 11 Oct 2022 · 191 MW · 2 12 Oct 2022 · 223 MW · 11
3 Oct 6 Oct 8 Oct 10 Oct 12 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

25°high
46km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 22 Oct.

This area had burned before

36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,006 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 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. Ambositra where it started
    2,797 ha reached on 3 Oct
    1.0 %

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 area1.2 ha
Residents≈ 650

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 650 residents (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)
3 Oct 24.4 °C 41 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
4 Oct 25.0 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Oct 25.1 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Oct 24.1 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
7 Oct 23.0 °C 38 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Oct 21.7 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Oct 20.6 °C 47 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
10 Oct 24.8 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Oct 24.7 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Oct 23.1 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Oct after 21.4 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
14 Oct after 20.0 °C 50 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
15 Oct after 21.0 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
16 Oct after 22.9 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
17 Oct after 22.1 °C 44 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Oct after 21.8 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Oct after 21.4 °C 47 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Oct after 20.5 °C 52 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 21
21 Oct after 20.2 °C 55 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
22 Oct after 22.5 °C 46 % 34 km/h 4.0 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Sept 2022
After · 19 Oct 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 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 224 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 76: 5.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak224 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10321 µg/m³
Optical depth1.34
123456789101112131415
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 · 108Every 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 Madagascar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ambositra fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 October 2022 and 12 October 2022: 10 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 2,780 hectares (27.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ambositra (2,797 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Madagascar (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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 108 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.