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Ménaka fire, December 2023 Ménaka

Out · last detection 21 Dec 2023, 13:53 UTC

The fire started on 21 December 2023 in Ménaka, Mali, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,112 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 122th largest in Gao since 2016 (of 135 with a page). Number 46 in Mali in 2023, of 56.

The power measured by the satellite is low (24.5 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: Ménaka · 2024Ménaka · 2025Ménaka · 2021Ménaka · 2024

Burnt area
2,112ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
21 Dec 2023 – 21 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
21 Dec
2023
Heat detections
59
in a single hotspot: 24 MW
Average daily power
758MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Dec21 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

21 Dec 2023 · 758 MW · 59

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Ménaka where it started
    2,120 ha reached on 21 Dec
    0.1 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Dec 2023
After · 28 Dec 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 19 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 193 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 135: 9.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak193 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10909 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
192021222324
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 · 59Every 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 Mali ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ménaka fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 December 2023 and 21 December 2023: 1 day 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 2,112 hectares (21.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ménaka (2,120 ha, 0.1 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mali (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. 59 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.

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 ADM3 (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.