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Lupososhi fire, 20 September 2022 Lupososhi

Out · last detection 19 Oct 2022, 12:30 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2022 in Lupososhi, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,786 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 119th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 49 in Zambia in 2022, of 235.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
7,786ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
20 Sept 2022 – 19 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Sept
2022
Heat detections
458
in a single hotspot: 122 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
289MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept19 Oct
19 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

22 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 23 Sept 2022 · 488 MW · 38 24 Sept 2022 · 1,266 MW · 44 25 Sept 2022 · 326 MW · 38 27 Sept 2022 · 544 MW · 24 28 Sept 2022 · 1,057 MW · 41 29 Sept 2022 · 491 MW · 29 30 Sept 2022 · 211 MW · 12 1 Oct 2022 · 198 MW · 17 2 Oct 2022 · 106 MW · 8 3 Oct 2022 · 651 MW · 55 4 Oct 2022 · 363 MW · 48 5 Oct 2022 · 362 MW · 11 6 Oct 2022 · 179 MW · 15 7 Oct 2022 · 109 MW · 5 8 Oct 2022 · 308 MW · 12 9 Oct 2022 · 504 MW · 30 10 Oct 2022 · 9 MW · 1 11 Oct 2022 · 10 MW · 1 12 Oct 2022 · 45 MW · 2 13 Oct 2022 · 13 MW · 1 14 Oct 2022 · 104 MW · 12 15 Oct 2022 · 92 MW · 7 16 Oct 2022 · 2 MW · 1 18 Oct 2022 · 47 MW · 1 19 Oct 2022 · 25 MW · 4
22 Sept 24 Sept 27 Sept 1 Oct 5 Oct 9 Oct 13 Oct 18 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
46km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,726 ha in 2016, 2,185 ha in 2017, 1,130 ha in 2018, 603 ha in 2019, 1,209 ha in 2020, 3,545 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,843 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (78 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
    7,834 ha reached on 22 Sept
    1.9 %

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 2020
Built-up area21 ha
Residents≈ 2,800

Inside the perimeter there were about 21 hectares of built-up land and about 2,800 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)
20 Sept 33.2 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Sept 32.5 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Sept 31.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Sept 31.1 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Sept 30.9 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Sept 31.0 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Sept 31.3 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Sept 31.8 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
28 Sept 30.3 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Sept 30.4 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Sept 30.3 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Oct 31.6 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Oct 31.8 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Oct 31.8 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Oct 31.7 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Oct 32.9 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Oct 32.9 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Oct 31.8 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Oct 31.9 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Oct 31.1 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Oct 30.5 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Oct 32.1 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Oct 31.7 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Oct 31.6 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Oct 31.5 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Oct 31.9 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Oct 32.2 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Oct 32.4 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Oct 33.0 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Oct 32.2 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Oct after 31.4 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Oct after 32.2 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Oct after 33.1 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Oct after 31.5 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Oct after 33.3 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Oct after 31.7 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
26 Oct after 34.6 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Oct after 33.5 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Oct after 33.2 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Oct after 33.9 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Sept 2022
After · 26 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 17 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 148 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 75: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak148 µg/m³
Days over the guideline34 days
PM10213 µg/m³
Optical depth1.79
1819202122232425262728293012345678910111213141516171819202122
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 · 458Every 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 20 September 2022 to 19 October 2022 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 September 2022 to 12 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,786 hectares (77.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lupososhi (7,834 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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: 12 October 2022 → 19 October 2022.
  2. Start date: 27 September 2022 → 20 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 September 2022 to 12 October 2022. 458 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.