Karimama fire, 24 December 2025 Karimama
The fire started on 24 December 2025 in Karimama, Benin, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,969 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 63th largest in Alibori since 2016 (of 543 with a page). Number 28 in Benin in 2025, of 164.
The power measured by the satellite is low (12.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,969ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 24 Dec 2025 – 31 Dec 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 24 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 52
- in a single hotspot: 12 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 24MW
- 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
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 33 ha in 2016, 865 ha in 2017, 1,244 ha in 2019, 668 ha in 2020, 4,253 ha in 2021, 211 ha in 2022, 79 ha in 2023, 455 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,804 ha that had burned before.
- 3,158 ha Karimama fire, February 2021 8,099 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,239 ha Karimama fire, November 2019 1,749 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 865 ha Karimama fire, December 2017 2,933 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 610 ha Karimama fire, November 2021 15,140 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 533 ha Karimama fire, February 2020 4,423 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 450 ha Karimama fire, December 2024 8,466 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 262 ha Karimama fire, January 2021 1,358 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 223 ha Karimama fire, December 2021 1,000 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Karimama where it started3,992 ha reached on 24 Dec0.6 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Dec | 36.5 °C | 17 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 25 Dec | 37.0 °C | 19 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Dec | 37.2 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 27 Dec | 37.7 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 28 Dec | 37.7 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Dec | 37.9 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 30 Dec | 38.1 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 31 Dec | 38.1 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 1 Jan after | 37.7 °C | 14 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 2 Jan after | 37.6 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 3 Jan after | 37.5 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Jan after | 37.0 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 5 Jan after | 36.8 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 6 Jan after | 37.0 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 7 Jan after | 37.1 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 8 Jan after | 35.7 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 9 Jan after | 36.0 °C | 9 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 10 Jan after | 34.0 °C | 10 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
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 28 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 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 · 52Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 15,140 haKarimama29 November 2021 · 8 days · 14 km away
- 11,904 haKarimama10 November 2017 · 17 days · 20 km away
- 11,751 haKarimama6 February 2026 · 16 days · 27 km away
- 9,886 haKarimama16 December 2019 · 15 days · 30 km away
- 13,413 haKarimama22 December 2025 · 11 days · 32 km away
- 13,889 haKarimama18 November 2017 · 17 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Karimama fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 December 2025 and 31 December 2025: 8 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 3,969 hectares (39.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Karimama (3,992 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Benin (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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 52 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.
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.