Bárue fire, 27 September 2022 Bárue
The fire started on 27 September 2022 in Bárue, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,356 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 47th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 61 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Bárue · 2021Bárue · 2016Bárue · 2017Bárue · 2017
- Burnt area
- 6,356ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 27 Sept 2022 – 18 Oct 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Sept
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 277
- in a single hotspot: 130 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 182MW
- 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 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 21 Oct.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,918 ha in 2016, 3,756 ha in 2017, 1,120 ha in 2018, 3,172 ha in 2019, 2,062 ha in 2020, 4,450 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,187 ha that had burned before.
- 1,647 ha Bárue fire, September 2021 3,825 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 721 ha Bárue fire, September 2016 8,047 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 632 ha Bárue fire, September 2017 12,021 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 44 ha Bárue fire, October 2017 3,285 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
-
Bárue where it started6,384 ha reached on 27 Sept1.1 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 3.6 hectares of built-up land and about 550 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Sept | 28.6 °C | 37 % | 46 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 35 |
| 29 Sept | 29.3 °C | 30 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 30 Sept | 30.5 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 1 Oct | 32.0 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 2 Oct | 31.3 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Oct | 33.4 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 4 Oct | 34.7 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 5 Oct | 33.0 °C | 26 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Oct | 33.8 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 7 Oct | 35.0 °C | 16 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 8 Oct | 29.9 °C | 37 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 9 Oct | 31.8 °C | 26 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Oct | 33.1 °C | 25 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 11 Oct | 30.5 °C | 31 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 12 Oct | 31.9 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 13 Oct | 33.3 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 14 Oct | 34.0 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 15 Oct | 32.9 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 16 Oct | 30.5 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 17 Oct | 30.9 °C | 29 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 18 Oct | 31.0 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Oct after | 30.1 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 20 Oct after | 30.3 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 38 |
| 21 Oct after | 31.9 °C | 38 % | 37 km/h | 2.2 mm | Moderate 16 |
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 4 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 100 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 51: 3.4 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 · 277Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,021 haBárue30 September 2017 · 25 days · 12 km away
- 12,745 haBárue18 September 2017 · 30 days · 17 km away
- 27,713 haMacossa1 September 2023 · 25 days · 27 km away
- 28,721 haMacossa11 September 2026 · 18 days · 30 km away
- 9,737 haBárue17 September 2022 · 30 days · 31 km away
- 30,185 haMacossa22 August 2025 · 39 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bárue fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2022 to 18 October 2022 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 September 2022 to 11 October 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,356 hectares (63.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bárue (6,384 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 52 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 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.
- Last day with fire: 11 October 2022 → 18 October 2022.
- Start date: 28 September 2022 → 27 September 2022.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 September 2022 to 11 October 2022. 277 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.
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.