Bárue fire, 31 August 2023 Bárue, Macossa
The fire started on 31 August 2023 in Bárue, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,713 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Manica since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 2 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Bárue · 2016Bárue · 2022Bárue · 2017Macossa · 2017
- Burnt area
- 27,713ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 32days
- 31 Aug 2023 – 1 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 31 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 1,962
- in a single hotspot: 201 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 2 Oct.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,018 ha in 2016, 12,890 ha in 2017, 10,723 ha in 2018, 7,845 ha in 2019, 7,703 ha in 2020, 12,078 ha in 2021, 14,472 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 25,085 ha that had burned before.
- 7,621 ha Bárue fire, August 2016 25,445 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,578 ha Bárue fire, September 2022 9,737 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,565 ha Bárue fire, September 2017 12,745 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,564 ha Macossa fire, September 2017 4,360 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,911 ha Bárue fire, September 2021 3,362 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,723 ha Macossa fire, August 2019 4,252 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,486 ha Bárue fire, September 2022 3,910 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,289 ha Bárue fire, August 2020 3,581 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 started16,590 ha reached on 31 Aug2.9 %
-
11,268 ha reached on 31 Aug1.2 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Aug | 25.7 °C | 41 % | 21 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 10 |
| 1 Sept | 30.9 °C | 25 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 2 Sept | 30.2 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 3 Sept | 29.6 °C | 35 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 4 Sept | 29.5 °C | 38 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 5 Sept | 30.1 °C | 34 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 6 Sept | 31.5 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 7 Sept | 28.8 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 8 Sept | 29.5 °C | 38 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 9 Sept | 29.2 °C | 35 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 10 Sept | 31.6 °C | 31 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 11 Sept | 34.2 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 12 Sept | 32.8 °C | 33 % | 61 km/h | 1.5 mm | High 28 |
| 13 Sept | 18.7 °C | 87 % | 49 km/h | 7.2 mm | Very low 0 |
| 14 Sept | 25.6 °C | 51 % | 32 km/h | 1.8 mm | Very low 2 |
| 15 Sept | 31.1 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 16 Sept | 35.1 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Sept | 36.3 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Sept | 29.7 °C | 44 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 19 Sept | 30.0 °C | 39 % | 24 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 20 Sept | 32.1 °C | 29 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 21 Sept | 32.6 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Sept | 32.2 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 23 Sept | 31.6 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 24 Sept | 33.3 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 25 Sept | 32.5 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 26 Sept | 35.0 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 27 Sept | 31.0 °C | 44 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 24 |
| 28 Sept | 31.5 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 29 Sept | 30.5 °C | 46 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 30 Sept | 33.9 °C | 39 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 1 Oct | 37.2 °C | 23 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 2 Oct after | 23.1 °C | 79 % | 53 km/h | 5.1 mm | Very low 1 |
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 7 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 122 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 75: 5.0 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 · 1,962Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,745 haBárue18 September 2017 · 30 days · 10 km away
- 30,185 haMacossa22 August 2025 · 39 days · 11 km away
- 13,314 haBárue11 September 2026 · 18 days · 15 km away
- 25,445 haBárueAugust 2016 · 32 days · 16 km away
- 12,021 haBárue30 September 2017 · 25 days · 17 km away
- 13,764 haBárue9 September 2022 · 23 days · 24 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 31 August 2023 to 1 October 2023 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2023 to 25 September 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,713 hectares (277.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bárue (16,590 ha, 2.9 %); Macossa (11,268 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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: 25 September 2023 → 1 October 2023.
- Start date: 1 September 2023 → 31 August 2023.
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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2023 to 25 September 2023. 1,962 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.
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.