Central Gonja fire, 31 December 2025 Central Gonja
The fire started on 31 December 2025 in Central Gonja, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,603 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 184th largest in Savannah since 2016 (of 336 with a page). Number 99 in Ghana in 2025, of 156.
The power measured by the satellite is low (26.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,603ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 21days
- 31 Dec 2025 – 20 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 31 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 82
- in a single hotspot: 26 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 39MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 245 ha in 2018, 523 ha in 2020, 387 ha in 2021, 296 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,281 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Central Gonja where it started2,617 ha reached on 31 Dec0.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Jan | 37.0 °C | 34 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 7 Jan | 37.0 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 8 Jan | 35.4 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 9 Jan | 36.6 °C | 24 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Jan | 36.5 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 11 Jan | 35.9 °C | 17 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Jan | 35.4 °C | 21 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Jan | 36.4 °C | 25 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 14 Jan | 36.1 °C | 28 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 15 Jan | 36.2 °C | 27 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Jan | 36.3 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 17 Jan | 35.9 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 18 Jan | 36.2 °C | 25 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 19 Jan | 37.1 °C | 22 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 20 Jan | 36.6 °C | 18 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Jan after | 34.4 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 22 Jan after | 35.2 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 23 Jan after | 35.7 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
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 13 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 125 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 104: 6.9 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 · 82Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Central Gonja fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 December 2025 to 20 January 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 January 2026 to 13 January 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,603 hectares (26.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Central Gonja (2,617 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 6 January 2026 to 13 January 2026. 82 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 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.