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Ibba fire, 11 December 2025 Ibba

Out · last detection 26 Dec 2025, 12:13 UTC

The fire started on 11 December 2025 in Ibba, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,746 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 290th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 232 in South Sudan in 2025, of 293.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yambio · 2019Yambio · 2025Ibba · 2025Ibba · 2020

Burnt area
5,746ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
11 Dec 2025 – 26 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
11 Dec
2025
Heat detections
118
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
163MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Dec26 Dec
26 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

11 Dec 2025 · 112 MW · 6 14 Dec 2025 · 213 MW · 21 16 Dec 2025 · 4 MW · 1 17 Dec 2025 · 12 MW · 3 18 Dec 2025 · 188 MW · 9 19 Dec 2025 · 406 MW · 20 20 Dec 2025 · 146 MW · 15 21 Dec 2025 · 502 MW · 37 25 Dec 2025 · 29 MW · 3 26 Dec 2025 · 20 MW · 3
11 Dec 16 Dec 18 Dec 20 Dec 21 Dec 25 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
35km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,416 ha in 2016, 1,883 ha in 2017, 1,153 ha in 2018, 2,104 ha in 2019, 1,885 ha in 2020, 3,705 ha in 2021, 107 ha in 2022, 2,202 ha in 2023, 864 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,642 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (57 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. Ibba where it started
    5,784 ha reached on 11 Dec
    0.6 %

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)
16 Dec 31.9 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Dec 32.5 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Dec 31.9 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Dec 31.9 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Dec 33.0 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Dec 33.1 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Dec 31.3 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Dec 32.8 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
24 Dec 33.1 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Dec 33.4 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Dec 32.8 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Dec after 34.2 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Dec after 32.1 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Dec after 30.1 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Dec after 31.6 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
31 Dec after 32.5 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Jan after 34.3 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Dec 2025
After · 2 Jan 2026

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 22 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 171 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 100: 6.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak171 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10176 µg/m³
Optical depth1.13
141516171819202122232425
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 · 118Every 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 Ibba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 December 2025 to 26 December 2025 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 December 2025 to 22 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,746 hectares (57.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ibba (5,784 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
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: 22 December 2025 → 26 December 2025.
  2. Start date: 16 December 2025 → 11 December 2025.

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 16 December 2025 to 22 December 2025. 118 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 (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.