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Juba fire, 5 December 2025 Juba

Out · last detection 9 Dec 2025, 23:29 UTC

The fire started on 5 December 2025 in Juba, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,727 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Central Equatoria since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 118 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Burnt area
9,727ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
5 Dec 2025 – 9 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
5 Dec
2025
Heat detections
116
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Energy released
858MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Dec 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Dec9 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

56789

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
40km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 17 Dec.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,414 ha in 2016, 18 ha in 2017, 5,035 ha in 2018, 420 ha in 2019, 6,595 ha in 2020, 3,948 ha in 2021, 181 ha in 2022, 1,127 ha in 2023, 808 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,335 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Juba where it started
    9,797 ha reached on 5 Dec
    0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
5 Dec 36.4 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Dec 36.4 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
7 Dec 36.9 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Dec 37.2 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Dec 36.7 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Dec after 34.1 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Dec after 34.8 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Dec after 32.7 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
13 Dec after 30.9 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
14 Dec after 34.1 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
15 Dec after 34.0 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Dec after 33.5 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Dec after 33.0 °C 27 % 23 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Nov 2025
After · 16 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 guideline4 days
PM1094 µg/m³
Optical depth0.70
3456789101112
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 · 116Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 December 2025 and 9 December 2025: 5 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,727 hectares (97.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Juba (9,797 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

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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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.