Madjoari fire, 2 December 2023 Madjoari, Pama
The fire started on 2 December 2023 in Madjoari, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,310 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 41th largest in Goulmou since 2016 (of 552 with a page). Number 10 in Burkina Faso in 2023, of 261.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,310ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 2 Dec 2023 – 8 Dec 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 2 Dec
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 132
- in a single hotspot: 81 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 241MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 495 ha in 2017, 330 ha in 2019, 892 ha in 2020, 752 ha in 2021, 728 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,502 ha that had burned before.
- 804 ha Madjoari fire, November 2020 1,151 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 625 ha Madjoari fire, November 2021 22,723 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 495 ha Madjoari fire, November 2017 1,089 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 296 ha Madjoari fire, February 2019 1,163 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 296 ha Madjoari fire, December 2022 1,519 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 294 ha Madjoari fire, March 2022 1,199 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 138 ha Tanguiéta fire, November 2022 42,755 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 127 ha Tanguiéta fire, December 2021 3,840 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Madjoari where it started3,891 ha reached on 2 Dec3.1 %
-
31 ha0.0 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Dec | 40.0 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 3 Dec | 39.7 °C | 7 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 4 Dec | 39.4 °C | 6 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 5 Dec | 39.7 °C | 9 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 6 Dec | 38.9 °C | 10 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 7 Dec | 38.6 °C | 6 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 8 Dec | 38.6 °C | 5 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 9 Dec after | 38.3 °C | 6 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 10 Dec after | 38.0 °C | 5 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 11 Dec after | 36.9 °C | 7 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 12 Dec after | 33.9 °C | 13 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 13 Dec after | 33.6 °C | 9 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 14 Dec after | 35.1 °C | 12 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 15 Dec after | 35.4 °C | 11 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 16 Dec after | 36.8 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 17 Dec after | 36.3 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 18 Dec after | 36.2 °C | 9 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 11 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 102 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 132Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 61,374 haTanguiéta18 December 2023 · 34 days · 12 km away
- 42,755 haTanguiéta22 November 2022 · 36 days · 23 km away
- 34,318 haTanguiéta13 December 2020 · 19 days · 23 km away
- 25,995 haTanguiéta29 December 2022 · 19 days · 28 km away
- 36,910 haTanguiéta23 November 2019 · 20 days · 31 km away
- 22,723 haMadjoari25 November 2021 · 24 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Madjoari fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 December 2023 and 8 December 2023: 7 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 4,310 hectares (43.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Madjoari (3,891 ha, 3.1 %); Pama (31 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 132 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.