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Mariga fire, 18 December 2023 Mariga

Out · last detection 11 Jan 2024, 12:17 UTC

The fire started on 18 December 2023 in Mariga, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,418 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 21th largest in Niger since 2016 (of 270 with a page). Number 7 in Nigeria in 2023, of 161.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mariga · 2022Mariga · 2026Mariga · 2025Mariga · 2023

Burnt area
12,418ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
18 Dec 2023 – 11 Jan 2024
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
18 Dec
2023
Heat detections
684
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
202MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Dec11 Jan
11 Jan 2024

How it evolved, day by day

18 Dec 2023 · 23 MW · 1 19 Dec 2023 · 42 MW · 3 20 Dec 2023 · 141 MW · 24 21 Dec 2023 · 37 MW · 5 22 Dec 2023 · 29 MW · 8 23 Dec 2023 · 147 MW · 18 24 Dec 2023 · 394 MW · 64 25 Dec 2023 · 293 MW · 32 26 Dec 2023 · 129 MW · 38 27 Dec 2023 · 881 MW · 102 28 Dec 2023 · 477 MW · 86 29 Dec 2023 · 445 MW · 97 30 Dec 2023 · 179 MW · 29 31 Dec 2023 · 318 MW · 38 1 Jan 2024 · 299 MW · 45 2 Jan 2024 · 163 MW · 36 3 Jan 2024 · 131 MW · 15 4 Jan 2024 · 64 MW · 14 5 Jan 2024 · 22 MW · 4 6 Jan 2024 · 77 MW · 9 7 Jan 2024 · 5 MW · 2 11 Jan 2024 · 147 MW · 14
18 Dec 22 Dec 26 Dec 27 Dec 30 Dec 3 Jan 7 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
38km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 978 ha in 2021, 4,225 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,340 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (124 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. Mariga where it started
    12,510 ha reached on 18 Dec
    2.0 %

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 area25 ha
Residents≈ 4,100

Inside the perimeter there were about 25 hectares of built-up land and about 4,100 residents (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)
18 Dec 35.3 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Dec 34.7 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Dec 34.3 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Dec 35.2 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Dec 35.0 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Dec 34.8 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Dec 32.7 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Dec 33.1 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Dec 32.1 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Dec 32.2 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Dec 33.6 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Dec 34.2 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Dec 34.4 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Dec 34.3 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Jan 34.9 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Jan 35.4 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Jan 34.7 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Jan 35.5 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Jan 35.4 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Jan 36.3 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Jan 35.3 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Jan 35.7 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Jan 36.2 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Jan 35.8 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Jan 35.8 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Jan after 34.8 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Jan after 34.7 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Jan after 33.9 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Jan after 32.9 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Jan after 33.4 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Jan after 33.1 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Jan after 34.1 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
19 Jan after 34.2 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Jan after 35.1 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Jan after 34.6 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Dec 2023
After · 18 Jan 2024

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 25 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 277 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 147: 9.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak277 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10797 µg/m³
Optical depth1.54
2324252627282930311234567
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 · 684Every 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 Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mariga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 December 2023 to 11 January 2024 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 December 2023 to 4 January 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,418 hectares (124.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mariga (12,510 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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: 4 January 2024 → 11 January 2024.
  2. Start date: 25 December 2023 → 18 December 2023.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 25 December 2023 to 4 January 2024. 684 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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.