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Lunte fire, 13 September 2022 Lunte

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2022, 11:02 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2022 in Lunte, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,400 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 310th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 629 with a page). Number 125 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lunte · 2018Lunte · 2021Lunte · 2025Lunte · 2020

Burnt area
4,400ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
13 Sept 2022 – 27 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
13 Sept
2022
Heat detections
145
in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
188MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept27 Sept
27 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

13 Sept 2022 · 25 MW · 5 14 Sept 2022 · 134 MW · 7 15 Sept 2022 · 34 MW · 2 16 Sept 2022 · 253 MW · 11 18 Sept 2022 · 40 MW · 4 20 Sept 2022 · 608 MW · 31 21 Sept 2022 · 347 MW · 20 23 Sept 2022 · 234 MW · 25 24 Sept 2022 · 289 MW · 32 25 Sept 2022 · 98 MW · 7 27 Sept 2022 · 7 MW · 1
13 Sept 15 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 21 Sept 24 Sept 27 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

31°high
42km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,006 ha in 2016, 378 ha in 2017, 2,795 ha in 2018, 1,163 ha in 2019, 1,052 ha in 2020, 3,050 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,089 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (44 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
    4,430 ha reached on 13 Sept
    0.6 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.96 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.96 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
18 Sept 28.9 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Sept 30.9 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Sept 30.9 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Sept 30.7 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Sept 29.8 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Sept 29.6 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept 29.2 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Sept 29.1 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Sept 29.2 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Sept 29.5 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Sept after 28.5 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Sept after 27.9 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Sept after 28.4 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Oct after 30.3 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Oct after 30.8 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Oct after 30.6 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Oct after 30.2 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Oct after 31.2 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Sept 2022
After · 4 Oct 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 11 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak72 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10103 µg/m³
Optical depth1.30
1112131415161718192021222324252627282930
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 · 145Every 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 13 September 2022 to 27 September 2022 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 September 2022 to 25 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,400 hectares (44.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lunte (4,430 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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: 25 September 2022 → 27 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 18 September 2022 → 13 September 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 18 September 2022 to 25 September 2022. 145 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.

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.