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Bárue fire, 20 September 2022 Bárue

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2022, 10:41 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2022 in Bárue, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,447 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 57th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 73 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bárue · 2017Bárue · 2025Bárue · 2016Bárue · 2026

Burnt area
5,447ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
20 Sept 2022 – 14 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Sept
2022
Heat detections
223
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
165MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept14 Oct
14 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

20 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 1 22 Sept 2022 · 215 MW · 3 23 Sept 2022 · 60 MW · 5 25 Sept 2022 · 203 MW · 4 27 Sept 2022 · 9 MW · 2 28 Sept 2022 · 97 MW · 10 29 Sept 2022 · 277 MW · 25 30 Sept 2022 · 195 MW · 9 1 Oct 2022 · 121 MW · 5 2 Oct 2022 · 664 MW · 26 3 Oct 2022 · 520 MW · 38 4 Oct 2022 · 320 MW · 32 5 Oct 2022 · 42 MW · 7 6 Oct 2022 · 248 MW · 12 7 Oct 2022 · 51 MW · 3 8 Oct 2022 · 73 MW · 9 9 Oct 2022 · 27 MW · 8 10 Oct 2022 · 23 MW · 2 11 Oct 2022 · 85 MW · 9 12 Oct 2022 · 7 MW · 1 13 Oct 2022 · 387 MW · 11 14 Oct 2022 · 2 MW · 1
20 Sept 27 Sept 1 Oct 2 Oct 5 Oct 9 Oct 13 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

35°high
38km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,372 ha in 2016, 182 ha in 2017, 2,080 ha in 2018, 1,873 ha in 2019, 846 ha in 2020, 2,376 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,971 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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. Bárue where it started
    5,491 ha reached on 20 Sept
    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 area7.0 ha
Residents≈ 1,300

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.0 hectares of built-up land and about 1,300 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)
27 Sept 32.1 °C 34 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Sept 28.6 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Sept 28.6 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Sept 29.8 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
1 Oct 31.4 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
2 Oct 30.9 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
3 Oct 33.0 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Oct 34.6 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Oct 32.1 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Oct 33.5 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Oct 34.7 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Oct 29.9 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Oct 31.9 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Oct 32.9 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
11 Oct 30.2 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Oct 32.0 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Oct 33.1 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Oct 33.8 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Oct after 32.4 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Oct after 30.1 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Oct after 30.2 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Oct after 30.6 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Sept 2022
After · 21 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 15 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 156 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak156 µg/m³
Days over the guideline29 days
PM10224 µg/m³
Optical depth2.19
181920212223242526272829301234567891011121314151617
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 · 223Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bárue fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 September 2022 to 14 October 2022 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 September 2022 to 8 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,447 hectares (54.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bárue (5,491 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 38 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 Mozambique (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: 8 October 2022 → 14 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 27 September 2022 → 20 September 2022.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 September 2022 to 8 October 2022. 223 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.