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Maban fire, 5 December 2023 Maban

Out · last detection 10 Dec 2023, 10:35 UTC

The fire started on 5 December 2023 in Maban, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,135 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 277th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 104 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Maban · 2023Maban · 2016Al Kurmuk · 2016Al Kurmuk · 2019

Burnt area
5,135ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
5 Dec 2023 – 10 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
5 Dec
2023
Heat detections
173
in a single hotspot: 157 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
401MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Dec10 Dec
10 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

5 Dec 2023 · 371 MW · 22 6 Dec 2023 · 1,857 MW · 79 7 Dec 2023 · 79 MW · 14 8 Dec 2023 · 31 MW · 7 9 Dec 2023 · 51 MW · 3 10 Dec 2023 · 19 MW · 3
5 Dec 6 Dec 7 Dec 8 Dec 9 Dec 10 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
34km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,000 ha in 2016, 188 ha in 2017, 972 ha in 2019, 2,483 ha in 2020, 1,848 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,252 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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. Maban where it started
    5,165 ha reached on 5 Dec
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
5 Dec 38.2 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Dec 38.8 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Dec 38.9 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Dec 38.2 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Dec 38.3 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Dec 38.9 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Dec after 38.9 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Dec after 39.0 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Dec after 37.1 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Dec after 37.2 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Dec after 38.1 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Dec after 38.4 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Dec after 39.7 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Dec after 38.5 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Dec after 38.8 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec after 39.2 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Nov 2023
After · 17 Dec 2023

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 4 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1072 µg/m³
Optical depth0.60
345678910111213
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 · 173Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Maban fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 December 2023 and 10 December 2023: 6 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 5,135 hectares (51.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Maban (5,165 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Sudan (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

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 173 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 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.