Liúpo fire, 3 October 2022 Liúpo
The fire started on 3 October 2022 in Liúpo, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,931 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 14th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 15 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Liúpo · 2018Liúpo · 2020Liúpo · 2017Liúpo · 2020
- Burnt area
- 18,931ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 3 Oct 2022 – 16 Oct 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 3 Oct
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 842
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 25
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 525MW
- 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 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 19 Oct.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,210 ha in 2016, 6,620 ha in 2017, 10,571 ha in 2018, 2,362 ha in 2019, 8,899 ha in 2020, 4,622 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,417 ha that had burned before.
- 9,336 ha Liúpo fire, September 2018 13,785 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,634 ha Liúpo fire, September 2020 16,681 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,854 ha Liúpo fire, October 2017 5,440 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,850 ha Liúpo fire, August 2020 3,282 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,543 ha Liúpo fire, September 2016 4,522 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,519 ha Liúpo fire, October 2021 3,542 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,075 ha Liúpo fire, September 2016 7,604 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 882 ha Liúpo fire, September 2016 3,448 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
-
Liúpo where it started19,041 ha8.9 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 7.6 hectares of built-up land and about 2,500 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Oct | 30.6 °C | 51 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 4 Oct | 31.7 °C | 41 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 5 Oct | 31.0 °C | 46 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 6 Oct | 30.6 °C | 46 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 7 Oct | 30.9 °C | 46 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 8 Oct | 30.4 °C | 52 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 9 Oct | 30.5 °C | 50 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Oct | 30.9 °C | 44 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 11 Oct | 30.2 °C | 48 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 12 Oct | 30.5 °C | 49 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 13 Oct | 31.2 °C | 45 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 14 Oct | 31.0 °C | 43 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Oct | 30.4 °C | 43 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Oct | 30.3 °C | 42 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Oct after | 30.6 °C | 48 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 18 Oct after | 30.1 °C | 57 % | 34 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 19 Oct after | 30.5 °C | 53 % | 35 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 17 |
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 14 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 142 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 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 · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,785 haLiúpo18 September 2018 · 19 days · 2 km away
- 16,681 haLiúpo6 September 2020 · 23 days · 6 km away
- 27,354 haLiúpoAugust 2026 · 31 days · 7 km away
- 8,508 haLiúpo16 September 2023 · 20 days · 8 km away
- 11,656 haLiúpo15 October 2017 · 13 days · 13 km away
- 15,883 haLiúpo9 October 2025 · 40 days · 16 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Liúpo fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 October 2022 and 16 October 2022: 14 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 18,931 hectares (189.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Liúpo (19,041 ha, 8.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 23 October 2022 → 16 October 2022.
- Start date: 30 September 2022 → 3 October 2022.
- Last day with fire: 16 October 2022 → 23 October 2022.
- Start date: 3 October 2022 → 30 September 2022.
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. No 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 2020, 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 (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.