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Majune fire, 20 September 2020 Majune

Out · last detection 3 Oct 2020, 10:35 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2020 in Majune, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,569 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 261th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 584 with a page). Number 92 in Mozambique in 2020, of 193.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Majune · 2022Maúa · 2022Majune · 2026Majune · 2022

Burnt area
4,569ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
20 Sept 2020 – 3 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Sept
2020
Heat detections
172
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
148MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept3 Oct
3 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

20 Sept 2020 · 14 MW · 2 21 Sept 2020 · 326 MW · 43 22 Sept 2020 · 931 MW · 74 24 Sept 2020 · 221 MW · 18 25 Sept 2020 · 127 MW · 6 26 Sept 2020 · 9 MW · 2 27 Sept 2020 · 30 MW · 5 29 Sept 2020 · 4 MW · 2 30 Sept 2020 · 36 MW · 9 1 Oct 2020 · 61 MW · 8 2 Oct 2020 · 2 MW · 1 3 Oct 2020 · 16 MW · 2
20 Sept 22 Sept 25 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept 2 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

30°high
49km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.1 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 695 ha in 2016, 743 ha in 2017, 660 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,520 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (46 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. Majune where it started
    4,604 ha reached on 20 Sept
    0.4 %

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)
21 Sept 28.2 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Sept 28.9 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Sept 26.1 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Sept 28.5 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Sept 28.4 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Sept 29.8 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Sept 29.0 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Sept 28.6 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Sept 30.0 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Sept 29.9 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Oct 31.4 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Oct 32.3 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Oct 31.5 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Oct after 31.4 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Oct after 31.5 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Oct after 28.0 °C 51 % 33 km/h 0.8 mm High 22
7 Oct after 26.4 °C 56 % 31 km/h 8.1 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Sept 2020
After · 10 Oct 2020

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 · 172Every 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 Mozambique ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Majune fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 September 2020 to 3 October 2020 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2020 to 27 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,569 hectares (45.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Majune (4,604 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 49 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 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

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: 27 September 2020 → 3 October 2020.
  2. Start date: 21 September 2020 → 20 September 2020.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 September 2020 to 27 September 2020. 172 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.