How long did the Majune fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2020 and 22 September 2020: 22 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 26,386 hectares (263.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Majune (26,504 ha, 2.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

MZ · Mozambique · 2020-09-01 → 2020-09-22

Majune fire, 1 September 2020 Majune

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2020, 23:10 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2020 in Majune, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,386 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 9th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 577 with a page). Number 7 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Majune · 2016 Majune · 2017 Majune · 2018 Majune · 2018

Burnt area: 26,386ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 1 Sept 2020 – 22 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 891; in a single hotspot: 130 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 271MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept22 Sept

Play back 23 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 9 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 21 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

33°high

42km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,832 ha in 2016, 4,450 ha in 2017, 5,801 ha in 2018, 3,199 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,693 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (264 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

Majune where it started

26,504 ha reached on 29 Aug

2.3 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
29 Aug	30.2 °C	37 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
30 Aug	30.2 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
31 Aug	30.0 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
1 Sept	30.7 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
2 Sept	29.0 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
3 Sept	26.2 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	High 31
4 Sept	27.4 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Sept	27.4 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Sept	26.6 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Sept	28.0 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Sept	26.0 °C	35 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
9 Sept	28.5 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
10 Sept	29.8 °C	25 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Sept	30.5 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Sept	31.2 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Sept	32.0 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Sept	32.7 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Sept	33.1 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
16 Sept	32.4 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Sept	32.9 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Sept	31.2 °C	29 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Sept	31.3 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Sept	30.3 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Sept	30.4 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Sept	32.4 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Sept after	28.7 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Sept after	31.5 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Sept after	30.4 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
26 Sept after	32.8 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Sept after	32.3 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Sept after	30.9 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Sept after	32.1 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Sept after	32.5 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Oct after	33.5 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
2 Oct after	34.8 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Oct after	33.2 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
4 Oct after	34.7 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
5 Oct after	34.3 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
6 Oct after	32.2 °C	40 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	High 32
7 Oct after	29.9 °C	52 %	34 km/h	2.9 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Aug 2020

After · 29 Sept 2020

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 891Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Majune fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2020 and 22 September 2020: 22 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 26,386 hectares (263.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Majune (26,504 ha, 2.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mozambique (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 891 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 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.

Where it burned