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Juba fire, 22 November 2025 Juba

Out · last detection 11 Dec 2025, 22:51 UTC

The fire started on 22 November 2025 in Juba, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,976 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Central Equatoria since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 82 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Juba · 2023Juba · 2020Juba · 2025Juba · 2025

Burnt area
13,976ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
22 Nov 2025 – 11 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
22 Nov
2025
Heat detections
346
in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
146MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Nov11 Dec
11 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

22 Nov 2025 · 30 MW · 4 24 Nov 2025 · 162 MW · 17 25 Nov 2025 · 52 MW · 15 26 Nov 2025 · 170 MW · 18 27 Nov 2025 · 106 MW · 18 28 Nov 2025 · 76 MW · 17 29 Nov 2025 · 326 MW · 28 30 Nov 2025 · 22 MW · 4 1 Dec 2025 · 281 MW · 26 2 Dec 2025 · 160 MW · 22 3 Dec 2025 · 25 MW · 20 4 Dec 2025 · 121 MW · 27 5 Dec 2025 · 3 MW · 3 6 Dec 2025 · 53 MW · 10 7 Dec 2025 · 312 MW · 22 8 Dec 2025 · 500 MW · 61 9 Dec 2025 · 370 MW · 30 10 Dec 2025 · 1 MW · 1 11 Dec 2025 · 9 MW · 3
22 Nov 26 Nov 29 Nov 2 Dec 5 Dec 8 Dec 11 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

38°high
48km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,572 ha in 2016, 1,565 ha in 2017, 1,691 ha in 2018, 4,487 ha in 2020, 5,972 ha in 2021, 1,125 ha in 2022, 398 ha in 2023, 4,732 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,639 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.8% of the area of London (140 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. Juba where it started
    14,081 ha reached on 22 Nov
    0.8 %

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)
22 Nov 36.7 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Nov 36.5 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Nov 36.5 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Nov 37.6 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Nov 36.9 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Nov 35.8 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Nov 36.7 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Nov 36.3 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Nov 38.0 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Dec 37.8 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Dec 37.7 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Dec 36.7 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Dec 37.3 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Dec 36.6 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Dec 36.6 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Dec 37.2 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Dec 37.6 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Dec 36.8 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Dec 34.5 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Dec 35.4 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Dec after 33.1 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
13 Dec after 31.5 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Dec after 34.5 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
15 Dec after 33.8 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Dec after 33.8 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Dec after 33.1 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.7 mm High 28
18 Dec after 32.9 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Dec after 33.5 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
20 Dec after 34.8 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Dec after 33.7 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Nov 2025
After · 18 Dec 2025

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 11 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 92 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak92 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1094 µg/m³
Optical depth0.70
2021222324252627282930123456789101112
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 · 346Every 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 Juba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 November 2025 to 11 December 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 November 2025 to 9 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,976 hectares (139.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Juba (14,081 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 9 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 22 November 2025 to 9 December 2025. 346 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.