Koch fire, 7 February 2024 Koch
The fire started on 7 February 2024 in Koch, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,524 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 64th largest in Unity since 2016 (of 85 with a page). Number 144 in South Sudan in 2024, of 180.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Koch · 2017Koch · 2024Mayom · 2019Koch · 2018
- Burnt area
- 5,524ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 7 Feb 2024 – 15 Feb 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 7 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 363
- in a single hotspot: 101 MW
- Danger at start
- 65
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 287MW
- 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
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,589 ha in 2016, 928 ha in 2017, 3,047 ha in 2019, 2,278 ha in 2020, 20 ha in 2021, 235 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,294 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Koch where it started5,562 ha reached on 3 Feb1.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Feb | 36.5 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 8 Feb | 38.3 °C | 8 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 9 Feb | 40.1 °C | 12 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 10 Feb | 40.4 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 11 Feb | 40.6 °C | 8 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 12 Feb | 41.2 °C | 6 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 13 Feb | 41.4 °C | 7 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 14 Feb | 42.2 °C | 7 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 15 Feb | 40.9 °C | 7 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 16 Feb after | 33.3 °C | 8 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 17 Feb after | 37.3 °C | 8 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 18 Feb after | 39.9 °C | 7 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 19 Feb after | 38.8 °C | 7 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 20 Feb after | 39.3 °C | 7 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 21 Feb after | 40.2 °C | 8 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 22 Feb after | 41.4 °C | 8 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 23 Feb after | 41.0 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 24 Feb after | 40.0 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 25 Feb after | 42.2 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
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 15 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 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 · 363Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Koch fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 February 2024 and 15 February 2024: 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 5,524 hectares (55.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Koch (5,562 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.
- 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.
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. 363 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.
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.