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Lupososhi fire, 31 August 2022 Lupososhi

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2022, 11:08 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2022 in Lupososhi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,759 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 54th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 629 with a page). Number 19 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lupososhi · 2016Mansa · 2020Lupososhi · 2020Mansa · 2021

Burnt area
13,759ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
31 Aug 2022 – 16 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Aug
2022
Heat detections
428
in a single hotspot: 126 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
322MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug16 Sept
16 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2022 · 125 MW · 9 2 Sept 2022 · 221 MW · 22 3 Sept 2022 · 19 MW · 4 4 Sept 2022 · 382 MW · 41 5 Sept 2022 · 1,009 MW · 56 6 Sept 2022 · 650 MW · 74 7 Sept 2022 · 403 MW · 43 8 Sept 2022 · 843 MW · 55 9 Sept 2022 · 257 MW · 31 10 Sept 2022 · 146 MW · 13 11 Sept 2022 · 101 MW · 8 12 Sept 2022 · 750 MW · 46 13 Sept 2022 · 156 MW · 13 14 Sept 2022 · 68 MW · 8 15 Sept 2022 · 16 MW · 4 16 Sept 2022 · 4 MW · 1
31 Aug 4 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 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
52km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,022 ha in 2016, 4,429 ha in 2017, 1,711 ha in 2018, 4,579 ha in 2019, 5,738 ha in 2020, 4,119 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,245 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.7% of the area of London (138 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. Lupososhi where it started
    13,849 ha reached on 31 Aug
    3.3 %

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)
31 Aug 27.2 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Sept 24.8 °C 41 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Sept 26.3 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Sept 28.0 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Sept 30.0 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 30.6 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Sept 30.8 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 28.2 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Sept 27.0 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 27.6 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Sept 28.9 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Sept 29.6 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 30.8 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Sept 29.8 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Sept 28.1 °C 30 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Sept 28.7 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Sept 29.5 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Sept after 30.1 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Sept after 31.2 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Sept after 31.6 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Sept after 33.5 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Sept after 32.9 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Sept after 31.5 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Sept after 31.4 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 31.0 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Sept after 31.3 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Sept after 31.7 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

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 7 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10163 µg/m³
Optical depth1.29
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 · 428Every 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 Lupososhi 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 2 September 2022 to 14 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,759 hectares (137.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lupososhi (13,849 ha, 3.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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: 14 September 2022 → 16 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 2 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2022 to 14 September 2022. 428 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.