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Majune fire, 3 September 2025 Majune

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2025, 11:03 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2025 in Majune, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,862 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 53th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 584 with a page). Number 41 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Majune · 2022Majune · 2016Majune · 2020Majune · 2026

Burnt area
10,862ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
3 Sept 2025 – 4 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Sept
2025
Heat detections
400
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
135MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept4 Oct
5 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2025 · 2 MW · 1 4 Sept 2025 · 21 MW · 4 7 Sept 2025 · 184 MW · 16 8 Sept 2025 · 32 MW · 9 11 Sept 2025 · 118 MW · 14 12 Sept 2025 · 55 MW · 7 13 Sept 2025 · 55 MW · 7 14 Sept 2025 · 9 MW · 2 16 Sept 2025 · 112 MW · 12 17 Sept 2025 · 84 MW · 9 18 Sept 2025 · 14 MW · 4 19 Sept 2025 · 194 MW · 35 20 Sept 2025 · 148 MW · 23 21 Sept 2025 · 478 MW · 44 22 Sept 2025 · 81 MW · 27 23 Sept 2025 · 94 MW · 22 24 Sept 2025 · 55 MW · 18 25 Sept 2025 · 429 MW · 34 26 Sept 2025 · 64 MW · 9 28 Sept 2025 · 20 MW · 3 29 Sept 2025 · 66 MW · 19 30 Sept 2025 · 9 MW · 2 2 Oct 2025 · 243 MW · 19 3 Oct 2025 · 116 MW · 24 4 Oct 2025 · 803 MW · 34 5 Oct 2025 · 19 MW · 2
3 Sept 11 Sept 16 Sept 20 Sept 24 Sept 29 Sept 4 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
41km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,460 ha in 2016, 1,424 ha in 2017, 1,283 ha in 2018, 79 ha in 2019, 2,664 ha in 2020, 7,440 ha in 2022, 173 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,441 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.9% of the area of London (109 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
    10,915 ha reached on 3 Sept
    1.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
3 Sept 29.6 °C 27 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Sept 31.6 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Sept 30.6 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Sept 30.9 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Sept 29.7 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Sept 31.4 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Sept 30.1 °C 40 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
10 Sept 32.3 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Sept 30.9 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Sept 31.3 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Sept 31.1 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Sept 30.6 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Sept 29.1 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
16 Sept 30.7 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Sept 32.6 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Sept 31.0 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Sept 32.2 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
20 Sept 32.0 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
21 Sept 33.0 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept 32.1 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Sept 31.2 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Sept 31.5 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Sept 31.9 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Sept 31.2 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Sept 30.9 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Sept 28.8 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
29 Sept 33.4 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Sept 32.1 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Oct 28.7 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
2 Oct 29.8 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Oct 30.2 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Oct 28.7 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Oct after 28.9 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 Oct after 29.3 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
7 Oct after 29.2 °C 41 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
8 Oct after 30.2 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Oct after 32.1 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Oct after 31.4 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
11 Oct after 31.8 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Oct after 32.2 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Oct after 32.3 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Oct after 30.5 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2025
After · 11 Oct 2025

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 14 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 55 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak55 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM1057 µg/m³
Optical depth0.84
89101112131415161718192021222324252627282930
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 · 400Every 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 3 September 2025 to 4 October 2025 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2025 to 27 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,862 hectares (108.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Majune (10,915 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 41 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 2025 → 4 October 2025.
  2. Start date: 10 September 2025 → 3 September 2025.

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 10 September 2025 to 27 September 2025. 400 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.

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.