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Lunte fire, August 2022 Lunte, Kasama

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2022, 11:46 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2022 in Lunte, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,207 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 93th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 629 with a page). Number 40 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lunte · 2021Lunte · 2019Lunte · 2020Lunte · 2016

Burnt area
9,207ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
31 Aug 2022 – 16 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
31 Aug
2022
Heat detections
269
in a single hotspot: 97 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
390MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug16 Sept
14 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2022 · 118 MW · 10 1 Sept 2022 · 7 MW · 1 3 Sept 2022 · 11 MW · 2 4 Sept 2022 · 203 MW · 7 5 Sept 2022 · 1,661 MW · 71 6 Sept 2022 · 1,937 MW · 93 7 Sept 2022 · 918 MW · 38 8 Sept 2022 · 282 MW · 11 9 Sept 2022 · 54 MW · 4 10 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 1 11 Sept 2022 · 9 MW · 3 12 Sept 2022 · 102 MW · 11 13 Sept 2022 · 32 MW · 3 14 Sept 2022 · 126 MW · 14
31 Aug 3 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 13 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
56km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,412 ha in 2016, 4,259 ha in 2017, 2,877 ha in 2018, 3,987 ha in 2019, 2,638 ha in 2020, 4,557 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,044 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (92 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Lunte where it started
    8,911 ha reached on 31 Aug
    1.1 %
  2. Kasama
    348 ha reached on 5 Sept
    0.0 %

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.

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)
1 Sept 24.2 °C 36 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Sept 24.8 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Sept 26.3 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Sept 27.8 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 27.7 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Sept 28.5 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 26.1 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept 25.0 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Sept 25.1 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 26.1 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept 26.3 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 27.4 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Sept 27.7 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Sept 26.5 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Sept 26.5 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Sept 26.6 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept after 27.5 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Sept after 27.8 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Sept after 29.8 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2022
After · 23 Sept 2022

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 6 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 79 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak79 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10113 µg/m³
Optical depth1.24
29303112345678910111213141516171819
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 · 269Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lunte fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2022 to 16 September 2022 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2022 to 9 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,207 hectares (92.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lunte (8,911 ha, 1.1 %); Kasama (348 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 9 September 2022 → 16 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 1 September 2022 → 31 August 2022.

RSS Changes to this page

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2022 to 9 September 2022. 269 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.