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Chobe fire, 11 September 2023 Chobe, Ngamiland East

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2023, 23:38 UTC

The fire started on 11 September 2023 in Chobe, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,699 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 19th largest in Chobe since 2016 (of 130 with a page). Number 26 in Botswana in 2023, of 381.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chobe · 2021Chobe · 2020Chobe · 2017Chobe · 2023

Burnt area
13,699ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
11 Sept 2023 – 19 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
2
subdistricts
Started on
11 Sept
2023
Heat detections
588
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
490MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Sept19 Sept
20 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

11 Sept 2023 · 843 MW · 76 12 Sept 2023 · 688 MW · 103 13 Sept 2023 · 1,715 MW · 180 14 Sept 2023 · 299 MW · 62 15 Sept 2023 · 264 MW · 40 16 Sept 2023 · 91 MW · 22 17 Sept 2023 · 66 MW · 17 18 Sept 2023 · 31 MW · 15 19 Sept 2023 · 858 MW · 39 20 Sept 2023 · 41 MW · 13
11 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
46km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 664 ha in 2017, 3,283 ha in 2020, 6,348 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,805 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.7% of the area of London (137 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Chobe where it started
    12,285 ha reached on 10 Sept
    0.6 %
  2. Ngamiland East
    1,522 ha reached on 13 Sept
    0.0 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
10 Sept 35.4 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Sept 36.6 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
12 Sept 28.8 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
13 Sept 30.7 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Sept 33.2 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Sept 34.4 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Sept 36.0 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept 37.2 °C 8 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Sept 36.0 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Sept 36.2 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
20 Sept after 35.5 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Sept after 37.0 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Sept after 37.3 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Sept after 37.3 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Sept after 37.7 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
25 Sept after 36.0 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
26 Sept after 29.3 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
27 Sept after 32.3 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
28 Sept after 33.5 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Sept after 34.7 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Sept after 37.6 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Oct after 38.7 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Oct after 37.1 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 61
3 Oct after 34.7 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Oct after 35.6 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Oct after 36.0 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Oct after 37.0 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Sept 2023
After · 26 Sept 2023

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 13 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 61 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak61 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM1088 µg/m³
Optical depth1.01
910111213141516171819202122
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 · 588Every 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 11 September 2023 and 19 September 2023: 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 13,699 hectares (137.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chobe (12,285 ha, 0.6 %); Ngamiland East (1,522 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
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

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 588 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.