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Mavinga fire, 16 August 2023 Mavinga

Out · last detection 27 Aug 2023, 11:39 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2023 in Mavinga, Angola, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,593 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 405th largest in Cuando Cubango since 2016 (of 659 with a page). Number 83 in Angola in 2023, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cuito Cuanavale · 2023Mavinga · 2023Mavinga · 2016

Burnt area
6,593ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
16 Aug 2023 – 27 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Aug
2023
Heat detections
227
in a single hotspot: 118 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
269MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

27 Aug 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug27 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 2023 · 114 MW · 5 17 Aug 2023 · 176 MW · 19 18 Aug 2023 · 517 MW · 55 19 Aug 2023 · 598 MW · 26 20 Aug 2023 · 200 MW · 24 21 Aug 2023 · 235 MW · 24 22 Aug 2023 · 214 MW · 23 23 Aug 2023 · 594 MW · 35 24 Aug 2023 · 280 MW · 8 26 Aug 2023 · 20 MW · 4 27 Aug 2023 · 8 MW · 4
16 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug 20 Aug 22 Aug 24 Aug 27 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
40km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 223 ha in 2017, 525 ha in 2018, 3,433 ha in 2019, 747 ha in 2021, 869 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,517 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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. Mavinga where it started
    6,606 ha reached on 16 Aug
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
16 Aug 30.0 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Aug 31.0 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Aug 31.6 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Aug 31.3 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Aug 32.0 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Aug 33.3 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Aug 33.7 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Aug 34.4 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Aug 33.9 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Aug 33.8 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Aug 33.6 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Aug 32.8 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
28 Aug after 29.4 °C 23 % 54 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 59
29 Aug after 28.2 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Aug after 27.6 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Aug after 29.0 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Sept after 31.5 °C 9 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Sept after 32.3 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Sept after 32.9 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Sept after 32.6 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Sept after 32.6 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Sept after 33.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Aug 2023
After · 3 Sept 2023

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 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak50 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM1072 µg/m³
Optical depth1.01
1415161718192021222324252627282930
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 · 227Every 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 Angola ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mavinga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 August 2023 and 27 August 2023: 12 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 6,593 hectares (65.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mavinga (6,606 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Angola (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

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. 227 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.

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 (Public Domain). 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.