Skip to content
worldfires
en
MZ · Mozambique · →

Mopeia fire, 1 December 2021 Mopeia

Out · last detection 17 Dec 2021, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 1 December 2021 in Mopeia, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,051 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 149th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 840 with a page). Number 14 in Mozambique in 2021, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mopeia · 2016Nicoadala · 2016Mopeia · 2026Mopeia · 2026

Burnt area
11,051ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
1 Dec 2021 – 17 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Dec
2021
Heat detections
562
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
416MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Dec17 Dec
17 Dec 2021

How it evolved, day by day

1 Dec 2021 · 72 MW · 3 2 Dec 2021 · 116 MW · 9 3 Dec 2021 · 490 MW · 29 4 Dec 2021 · 1,751 MW · 100 5 Dec 2021 · 577 MW · 64 6 Dec 2021 · 294 MW · 27 7 Dec 2021 · 431 MW · 39 8 Dec 2021 · 377 MW · 16 9 Dec 2021 · 365 MW · 48 10 Dec 2021 · 254 MW · 30 11 Dec 2021 · 232 MW · 23 12 Dec 2021 · 437 MW · 24 13 Dec 2021 · 580 MW · 51 14 Dec 2021 · 192 MW · 19 15 Dec 2021 · 52 MW · 8 16 Dec 2021 · 305 MW · 24 17 Dec 2021 · 552 MW · 48
1 Dec 4 Dec 7 Dec 10 Dec 13 Dec 16 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
52km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 39.1 mm on 18 Dec.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7% of the area of London (111 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. Mopeia where it started
    11,119 ha
    1.4 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
1 Dec 34.5 °C 45 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
2 Dec 36.8 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
3 Dec 38.5 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Dec 38.7 °C 25 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Dec 40.2 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Dec 40.4 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Dec 41.1 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Dec 37.2 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
9 Dec 37.5 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Dec 38.0 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Dec 37.2 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Dec 39.0 °C 29 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Dec 39.5 °C 27 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Dec 39.7 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
15 Dec 38.1 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
16 Dec 39.0 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 42
17 Dec 38.1 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Dec after 26.9 °C 80 % 26 km/h 39.1 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Nov 2021
After · 24 Dec 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 0Every 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 Mopeia fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 December 2021 and 17 December 2021: 17 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 11,051 hectares (110.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mopeia (11,119 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 52 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. Start date: 27 November 2021 → 1 December 2021.
  2. Start date: 1 December 2021 → 27 November 2021.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.