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Central Gonja fire, 18 December 2019 Central Gonja

Out · last detection 27 Dec 2019, 13:32 UTC

The fire started on 18 December 2019 in Central Gonja, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,857 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Savannah since 2016 (of 336 with a page). Number 7 in Ghana in 2019, of 127.

Burnt area
7,857ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
18 Dec 2019 – 26 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Dec
2019
Heat detections
258
in a single hotspot: 182 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
3.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

27 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Dec26 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

18192021222324252627

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
37km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 977 ha in 2016, 2,130 ha in 2017, 762 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,891 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Central Gonja where it started
    7,909 ha reached on 12 Dec
    1.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
18 Dec 35.9 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Dec 35.3 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Dec 35.7 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Dec 35.7 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Dec 36.4 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Dec 36.6 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Dec 35.7 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Dec 35.9 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Dec 35.8 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Dec after 34.7 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Dec after 35.2 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Dec after 36.1 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Dec after 35.5 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Dec after 34.6 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Jan after 34.2 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Jan after 31.3 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Jan after 29.7 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
4 Jan after 30.6 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Jan after 32.8 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Dec 2019
After · 2 Jan 2020

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 · 258Every 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 Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Central Gonja fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 December 2019 and 26 December 2019: 9 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 7,857 hectares (78.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Gonja (7,909 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ghana (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.

Emergency number: 112

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.