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Marrupa fire, 26 October 2022 Marrupa

Out · last detection 31 Oct 2022, 23:11 UTC

The fire started on 26 October 2022 in Marrupa, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,604 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 395th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 589 with a page). Number 147 in Mozambique in 2022, of 206.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Marrupa · 2026Mecula · 2022Marrupa · 2021Mecula · 2019

Burnt area
3,604ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
26 Oct 2022 – 31 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
26 Oct
2022
Heat detections
113
in a single hotspot: 26 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
129MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Oct31 Oct
31 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

26 Oct 2022 · 403 MW · 43 27 Oct 2022 · 106 MW · 21 28 Oct 2022 · 52 MW · 9 29 Oct 2022 · 2 MW · 3 30 Oct 2022 · 71 MW · 16 31 Oct 2022 · 138 MW · 21
26 Oct 27 Oct 28 Oct 29 Oct 30 Oct 31 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

35°high
37km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 22 ha in 2016, 820 ha in 2018, 892 ha in 2019, 9 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,013 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Marrupa where it started
    3,618 ha reached on 26 Oct
    0.2 %

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 area0.17 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of 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)
26 Oct 33.3 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Oct 33.8 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Oct 34.7 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Oct 34.7 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Oct 33.6 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Oct 34.8 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Nov after 34.4 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Nov after 33.4 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Nov after 34.3 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Nov after 33.6 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Nov after 33.8 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Nov after 33.5 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Nov after 34.1 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Nov after 34.4 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Nov after 34.5 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Nov after 34.2 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Oct 2022
After · 7 Nov 2022

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 28 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
Optical depth0.77
2425262728293031123
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 · 113Every 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 Marrupa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 October 2022 and 31 October 2022: 6 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 3,604 hectares (36.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Marrupa (3,618 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 113 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.