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Chobe fire, 29 August 2022 Chobe

Out · last detection 2 Sept 2022, 23:19 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2022 in Chobe, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,283 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 116th largest in Chobe since 2016 (of 129 with a page). Number 282 in Botswana in 2022, of 327.

Burnt area
2,283ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
29 Aug 2022 – 2 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
subdistricts
Started on
29 Aug
2022
Heat detections
105
in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Energy released
804MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug2 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

29303112

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

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8 ha in 2016, 204 ha in 2017, 604 ha in 2018, 99 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Chobe where it started
    2,296 ha reached on 28 Aug
    0.1 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2022
After · 9 Sept 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 · 105Every 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 Botswana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chobe fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2022 and 2 September 2022: 5 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 2,283 hectares (22.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Chobe (2,296 ha, 0.1 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Botswana (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 (Public Domain). 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.