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Chitambo fire, July 2024 Chitambo

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2024, 11:32 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2024 in Chitambo, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,692 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 101th largest in Central since 2016 (of 400 with a page). Number 49 in Zambia in 2024, of 160.

Burnt area
6,692ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
12 Jul 2024 – 27 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
12 Jul
2024
Heat detections
154
in a single hotspot: 99 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Jul 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul27 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

17181920212223

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
32km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,348 ha in 2016, 1,928 ha in 2017, 1,484 ha in 2019, 2,330 ha in 2020, 2,504 ha in 2021, 2,462 ha in 2022, 577 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,705 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Chitambo where it started
    6,720 ha reached on 6 Jul
    0.6 %

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)
12 Jul 27.6 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul 27.8 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Jul 27.7 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Jul 27.6 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Jul 27.6 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Jul 27.9 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jul 26.7 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Jul 26.8 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Jul 28.5 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jul 29.9 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jul 29.3 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Jul 28.3 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Jul 27.5 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jul 28.0 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Jul 28.7 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Jul 28.3 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jul after 28.4 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Jul after 29.5 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Jul after 29.3 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Jul after 28.7 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Aug after 27.3 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Aug after 27.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Aug after 28.5 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Aug after 29.3 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug after 30.6 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Aug after 29.3 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2024
After · 3 Aug 2024

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 · Copernicus

On 26 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM1067 µg/m³
Optical depth0.58
101112131415161718192021222324252627282930
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 154Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chitambo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 July 2024 and 27 July 2024: 16 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 6,692 hectares (66.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Chitambo (6,720 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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

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.

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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 (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.