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Mocuba fire, 4 September 2023 Mocuba

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2023, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2023 in Mocuba, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,786 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 567th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 86 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mocuba · 2021Mocuba · 2020Mocuba · 2022Mocuba · 2018

Burnt area
3,786ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
4 Sept 2023 – 27 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
4 Sept
2023
Heat detections
243
in a single hotspot: 119 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
155MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept27 Sept
27 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2023 · 52 MW · 7 5 Sept 2023 · 59 MW · 5 7 Sept 2023 · 28 MW · 6 8 Sept 2023 · 11 MW · 3 10 Sept 2023 · 36 MW · 8 11 Sept 2023 · 217 MW · 21 12 Sept 2023 · 279 MW · 23 15 Sept 2023 · 26 MW · 5 16 Sept 2023 · 283 MW · 25 17 Sept 2023 · 1,065 MW · 63 18 Sept 2023 · 418 MW · 36 19 Sept 2023 · 67 MW · 5 20 Sept 2023 · 363 MW · 13 21 Sept 2023 · 23 MW · 2 22 Sept 2023 · 16 MW · 2 23 Sept 2023 · 11 MW · 3 24 Sept 2023 · 27 MW · 3 25 Sept 2023 · 85 MW · 6 26 Sept 2023 · 6 MW · 2 27 Sept 2023 · 29 MW · 5
4 Sept 8 Sept 12 Sept 17 Sept 20 Sept 23 Sept 26 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

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 560 ha in 2016, 111 ha in 2017, 1,305 ha in 2018, 639 ha in 2019, 2,263 ha in 2020, 3,923 ha in 2021, 2,507 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,739 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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
    3,807 ha reached on 4 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 area0.48 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.48 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)
11 Sept 34.3 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Sept 36.3 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
13 Sept 28.5 °C 57 % 42 km/h 3.7 mm Low 6
14 Sept 28.5 °C 46 % 29 km/h 2.0 mm Low 7
15 Sept 31.7 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Sept 36.1 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept 37.6 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Sept 33.8 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Sept 31.3 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Sept 34.3 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Sept 34.9 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Sept 34.5 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Sept 35.2 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Sept 35.7 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Sept 35.6 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Sept 35.9 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Sept 34.9 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Sept after 35.4 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Sept after 34.3 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Sept after 36.3 °C 22 % 33 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 · 28 Aug 2023
After · 4 Oct 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 80 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak80 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10115 µg/m³
Optical depth1.38
91011121314151617181920212223
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 · 243Every 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 4 September 2023 to 27 September 2023 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2023 to 20 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,786 hectares (37.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mocuba (3,807 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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: 20 September 2023 → 27 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 11 September 2023 → 4 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 11 September 2023 to 20 September 2023. 243 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.