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MW · Malawi · →

Karonga fire, 16 October 2020 Karonga

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2020, 10:42 UTC

The fire started on 16 October 2020 in Karonga, Malawi, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,606 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 176th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 418 with a page). Number 35 in Malawi in 2020, of 87.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,606ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
16 Oct 2020 – 24 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
16 Oct
2020
Heat detections
55
in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Energy released
325MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Oct 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Oct24 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

161718192021222324

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

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 29 ha in 2017, 716 ha in 2018, 251 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Karonga where it started
    1,616 ha reached on 16 Oct
    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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Oct 2020
After · 31 Oct 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 55Every 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 Malawi ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Karonga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 October 2020 and 24 October 2020: 9 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 1,606 hectares (16.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Karonga (1,616 ha, 0.5 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malawi (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.