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Ezo fire, 27 December 2022 Ezo, Tambura

Out · last detection 18 Jan 2023, 23:26 UTC

The fire started on 27 December 2022 in Ezo, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,820 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 144th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 359 with a page). Number 42 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ezo · 2018Ezo · 2020Ezo · 2016Ezo · 2016

Burnt area
9,820ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
27 Dec 2022 – 17 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
27 Dec
2022
Heat detections
357
in a single hotspot: 296 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
275MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Dec17 Jan
18 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

27 Dec 2022 · 137 MW · 3 29 Dec 2022 · 10 MW · 6 30 Dec 2022 · 27 MW · 6 31 Dec 2022 · 13 MW · 4 1 Jan 2023 · 28 MW · 11 2 Jan 2023 · 18 MW · 5 3 Jan 2023 · 23 MW · 8 4 Jan 2023 · 1,758 MW · 97 5 Jan 2023 · 743 MW · 69 6 Jan 2023 · 199 MW · 29 7 Jan 2023 · 41 MW · 18 8 Jan 2023 · 32 MW · 8 9 Jan 2023 · 2,376 MW · 71 10 Jan 2023 · 11 MW · 1 11 Jan 2023 · 2 MW · 3 12 Jan 2023 · 2 MW · 3 13 Jan 2023 · 4 MW · 4 15 Jan 2023 · 16 MW · 2 17 Jan 2023 · 64 MW · 7 18 Jan 2023 · 2 MW · 2
27 Dec 31 Dec 3 Jan 6 Jan 9 Jan 12 Jan 17 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
44km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,409 ha in 2016, 1,075 ha in 2017, 3,640 ha in 2018, 3,297 ha in 2019, 6,824 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,528 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.2% of the area of London (98 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. Ezo where it started
    9,816 ha reached on 27 Dec
    1.2 %
  2. Tambura
    71 ha reached on 4 Jan
    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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
27 Dec 32.0 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Dec 33.5 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Dec 33.8 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Dec 34.0 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Dec 34.4 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Jan 35.3 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Jan 35.2 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Jan 35.0 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Jan 35.4 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Jan 35.0 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Jan 35.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Jan 35.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Jan 34.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Jan 36.6 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Jan 33.5 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Jan 33.7 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Jan 34.3 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Jan 34.6 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Jan 35.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Jan 35.9 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
16 Jan 36.9 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Jan 36.4 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Jan after 37.0 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Jan after 37.0 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Jan after 37.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Jan after 37.5 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Jan after 37.1 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Jan after 37.1 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Jan after 37.5 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
25 Jan after 36.7 °C 17 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Jan after 35.7 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Jan after 38.5 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Dec 2022
After · 24 Jan 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 2 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 146 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 90: 6.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak146 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10209 µg/m³
Optical depth2.16
272829303112345678910111213
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 · 357Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ezo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 December 2022 to 17 January 2023 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 December 2022 to 10 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,820 hectares (98.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ezo (9,816 ha, 1.2 %); Tambura (71 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 January 2023 → 17 January 2023.
  2. Start date: 29 December 2022 → 27 December 2022.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 December 2022 to 10 January 2023. 357 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 2020, 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 (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.