Ghanzi fire, 16 August 2022 Ghanzi, Kweneng North, Kweneng South
The fire started on 16 August 2022 in Ghanzi, Botswana, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 43,633 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 12th largest in Ghanzi since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 8 in Botswana in 2022, of 327.
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Suggestions: Ghanzi · 2019Ghanzi · 2024Ghanzi · 2022Ghanzi · 2022
- Burnt area
- 43,633ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 16 Aug 2022 – 22 Aug 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 16 Aug
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 1,668
- in a single hotspot: 306 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 6.0GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 16 ha in 2019.
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
-
Ghanzi where it started24,216 ha reached on 16 Aug0.2 %
-
11,237 ha reached on 16 Aug1.1 %
-
8,489 ha reached on 17 Aug0.3 %
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 2020Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Aug | 26.6 °C | 12 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 17 Aug | 29.8 °C | 12 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 18 Aug | 30.0 °C | 9 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 19 Aug | 20.8 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 Aug | 24.2 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Aug | 25.1 °C | 12 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 22 Aug | 23.9 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Aug after | 25.4 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Aug after | 25.5 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 25 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 13 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 26 Aug after | 29.7 °C | 9 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 27 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 11 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 28 Aug after | 31.6 °C | 12 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 29 Aug after | 32.3 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 30 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 12 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 31 Aug after | 24.0 °C | 35 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Sept after | 25.0 °C | 18 % | 40 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.
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 17 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 136 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 65: 4.3 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 · 1,668Every 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 Ghanzi fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 August 2022 to 22 August 2022 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 August 2022 to 21 August 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 43,633 hectares (436.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Ghanzi (24,216 ha, 0.2 %); Kweneng North (11,237 ha, 1.1 %); Kweneng South (8,489 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 21 August 2022 → 22 August 2022.
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; 5 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 August 2022 to 21 August 2022. 1,668 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.
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.