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Central Gonja fire, January 2022 Central Gonja

Out · last detection 14 Jan 2022, 01:43 UTC

The fire started on 6 January 2022 in Central Gonja, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,043 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 69th largest in Savannah since 2016 (of 336 with a page). Number 20 in Ghana in 2022, of 118.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
4,043ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
6 Jan 2022 – 14 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Jan
2022
Heat detections
168
in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
783MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Jan 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jan14 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

67891011121314

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
35km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 56 ha in 2016, 1,252 ha in 2017, 176 ha in 2018, 78 ha in 2019, 3,039 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,706 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Central Gonja where it started
    4,070 ha reached on 6 Jan
    0.5 %

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)
6 Jan 35.4 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Jan 33.8 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Jan 35.1 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Jan 35.5 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Jan 36.4 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
11 Jan 35.7 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Jan 36.7 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Jan 36.4 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Jan 36.4 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Jan after 36.4 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Jan after 34.9 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Jan after 35.7 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Jan after 32.5 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
19 Jan after 34.0 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Jan after 34.0 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Jan after 33.4 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
22 Jan after 34.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Jan after 33.5 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
24 Jan after 35.5 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Dec 2021
After · 21 Jan 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.

Detections table · 168Every 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 6 January 2022 and 14 January 2022: 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 4,043 hectares (40.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Gonja (4,070 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
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.