Duk fire, 28 December 2023 Duk
The fire started on 28 December 2023 in Duk, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,377 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 370th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 427 with a page). Number 96 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Duk · 2024Ayod · 2023Duk · 2025
- Burnt area
- 5,377ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 28 Dec 2023 – 11 Jan 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 28 Dec
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 205
- in a single hotspot: 36 MW
- Danger at start
- 52
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 98MW
- 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 39 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,013 ha in 2016, 549 ha in 2017, 100 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,395 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
-
Duk where it started5,414 ha reached on 26 Dec0.8 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Dec | 36.1 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 29 Dec | 37.3 °C | 12 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 30 Dec | 37.6 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 31 Dec | 37.4 °C | 12 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 1 Jan | 37.0 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 2 Jan | 38.4 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Jan | 38.0 °C | 10 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Jan | 38.0 °C | 9 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Jan | 36.4 °C | 11 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 6 Jan | 37.2 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 7 Jan | 36.5 °C | 11 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Jan | 38.0 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 9 Jan | 38.6 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 10 Jan | 39.0 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 11 Jan | 39.1 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 12 Jan after | 37.6 °C | 13 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 13 Jan after | 37.6 °C | 12 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 14 Jan after | 38.7 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 15 Jan after | 38.1 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 16 Jan after | 36.8 °C | 10 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 17 Jan after | 36.6 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 18 Jan after | 35.1 °C | 12 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 19 Jan after | 36.9 °C | 8 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 20 Jan after | 37.4 °C | 7 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 21 Jan after | 37.2 °C | 9 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
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 9 January 2024 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 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 · 205Every 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 Duk fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 December 2023 and 11 January 2024: 15 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 5,377 hectares (53.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Duk (5,414 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Sudan (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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 205 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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.