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Gorongosa fire, 23 September 2022 Gorongosa

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2022, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2022 in Gorongosa, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,369 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 10th largest in Sofala since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 14 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gorongosa · 2021Gorongosa · 2016Gorongosa · 2019Gorongosa · 2020

Burnt area
19,369ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
23 Sept 2022 – 21 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Sept
2022
Heat detections
1,373
in a single hotspot: 231 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
604MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept21 Oct
21 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 2022 · 218 MW · 19 24 Sept 2022 · 226 MW · 17 25 Sept 2022 · 307 MW · 22 26 Sept 2022 · 150 MW · 17 27 Sept 2022 · 179 MW · 26 28 Sept 2022 · 52 MW · 5 29 Sept 2022 · 115 MW · 19 30 Sept 2022 · 2,058 MW · 164 1 Oct 2022 · 2,151 MW · 166 2 Oct 2022 · 1,366 MW · 100 3 Oct 2022 · 1,604 MW · 132 4 Oct 2022 · 1,773 MW · 140 5 Oct 2022 · 400 MW · 34 6 Oct 2022 · 840 MW · 64 7 Oct 2022 · 2,692 MW · 112 8 Oct 2022 · 8 MW · 2 9 Oct 2022 · 75 MW · 17 10 Oct 2022 · 187 MW · 53 11 Oct 2022 · 413 MW · 30 12 Oct 2022 · 1,283 MW · 64 13 Oct 2022 · 274 MW · 28 14 Oct 2022 · 393 MW · 54 15 Oct 2022 · 33 MW · 7 16 Oct 2022 · 65 MW · 11 17 Oct 2022 · 192 MW · 19 18 Oct 2022 · 199 MW · 14 19 Oct 2022 · 76 MW · 13 20 Oct 2022 · 83 MW · 14 21 Oct 2022 · 95 MW · 10
23 Sept 28 Sept 3 Oct 7 Oct 8 Oct 13 Oct 18 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
42km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 29 Oct.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,664 ha in 2016, 6,353 ha in 2017, 6,215 ha in 2018, 9,784 ha in 2019, 7,497 ha in 2020, 12,225 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,073 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (194 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. Gorongosa where it started
    19,488 ha reached on 23 Sept
    2.9 %

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 area7.5 ha
Residents≈ 2,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.5 hectares of built-up land and about 2,000 residents (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)
23 Sept 31.6 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Sept 31.6 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
25 Sept 31.2 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Sept 32.5 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
27 Sept 33.1 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Sept 28.3 °C 48 % 40 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 19
29 Sept 28.6 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
30 Sept 30.7 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Oct 31.8 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Oct 31.0 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
3 Oct 33.0 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Oct 35.1 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Oct 32.1 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Oct 33.9 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Oct 35.0 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Oct 30.3 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.7 mm High 25
9 Oct 31.4 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
10 Oct 32.4 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
11 Oct 30.4 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.7 mm High 22
12 Oct 32.5 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Oct 33.4 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Oct 34.0 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Oct 32.6 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Oct 30.8 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Oct 31.1 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Oct 30.8 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Oct 30.0 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Oct 31.2 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Oct 32.4 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.8 mm High 24
22 Oct after 33.2 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
23 Oct after 32.1 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm High 27
24 Oct after 32.6 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Oct after 33.3 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.7 mm High 23
26 Oct after 37.0 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Oct after 34.0 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Oct after 33.8 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Oct after 28.8 °C 54 % 35 km/h 3.7 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Sept 2022
After · 28 Oct 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 4 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 148 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak148 µg/m³
Days over the guideline28 days
PM10211 µg/m³
Optical depth2.06
21222324252627282930123456789101112131415161718192021222324
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 · 1,373Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gorongosa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2022 to 21 October 2022 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 September 2022 to 14 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,369 hectares (193.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gorongosa (19,488 ha, 2.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (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: 14 October 2022 → 21 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 29 September 2022 → 23 September 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 September 2022 to 14 October 2022. 1,373 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.