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Mocuba fire, 1 September 2023 Mocuba

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2023, 10:28 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2023 in Mocuba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,952 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 532th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 840 with a page). Number 77 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mocuba · 2022Mocuba · 2019Mocuba · 2026Mocuba · 2018

Burnt area
3,952ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
1 Sept 2023 – 21 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2023
Heat detections
185
in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
108MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept21 Sept
21 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2023 · 34 MW · 6 2 Sept 2023 · 40 MW · 6 3 Sept 2023 · 200 MW · 20 4 Sept 2023 · 111 MW · 11 5 Sept 2023 · 333 MW · 16 7 Sept 2023 · 50 MW · 11 8 Sept 2023 · 38 MW · 7 9 Sept 2023 · 68 MW · 3 10 Sept 2023 · 334 MW · 33 11 Sept 2023 · 260 MW · 31 12 Sept 2023 · 68 MW · 7 14 Sept 2023 · 6 MW · 1 16 Sept 2023 · 12 MW · 2 17 Sept 2023 · 117 MW · 19 18 Sept 2023 · 151 MW · 9 20 Sept 2023 · 3 MW · 1 21 Sept 2023 · 9 MW · 2
1 Sept 4 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 16 Sept 20 Sept

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
43km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 950 ha in 2017, 8 ha in 2018, 162 ha in 2019, 404 ha in 2020, 1,877 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,622 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (40 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. Mocuba where it started
    3,971 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.4 %

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 area0.47 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.47 hectares of built-up land and about 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)
2 Sept 33.1 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Sept 32.2 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Sept 32.9 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 33.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Sept 34.3 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 32.3 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Sept 30.5 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept 30.8 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Sept 33.8 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept 34.7 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Sept 36.5 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
13 Sept 28.8 °C 55 % 43 km/h 4.5 mm Low 7
14 Sept 29.1 °C 46 % 28 km/h 1.9 mm Low 8
15 Sept 32.2 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
16 Sept 36.7 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept 38.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Sept 34.5 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept 31.7 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Sept 34.8 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Sept 35.4 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Sept after 35.1 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Sept after 35.8 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Sept after 35.8 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2023
After · 28 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 11 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 79 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak79 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM10113 µg/m³
Optical depth1.13
311234567891011121314151617
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 · 185Every 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 Mocuba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2023 to 21 September 2023 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2023 to 14 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,952 hectares (39.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mocuba (3,971 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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: 14 September 2023 → 21 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 2 September 2023 → 1 September 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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2023 to 14 September 2023. 185 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.