Burned area
satellite only1,332ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 7 Aug 2024 – 10 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
CG · Republic of the Congo · –
Mossaka fire, August 2024 Mossaka
Out · last detection 10 Aug 2024, 12:39 UTC
The fire started on 7 August 2024 in Mossaka, Republic of the Congo, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,332 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 7th largest in Cuvette since 2016 (of 26 with a page). Number 40 in Republic of the Congo in 2024, of 103.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-27matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only4days
7 Aug 2024 to 10 Aug 2024: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 10 Aug 2024, 12:39 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only7 Aug 2024
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 7 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
The worst day
satellite only154MW
Total radiative power on 9 August 2024; hotspots that day: 13.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 9 Aug 2024
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model26.0FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 45.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 7 Aug 2024, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model32.4°C · 55% RH
High of 32.4 °C and minimum humidity of 55% on 10 August 2024; gusts of 36 km/h on 7 August 2024.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 7 Aug 2024 – 10 Aug 2024
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 12 August 2024 → 10 August 2024.
-
logStart date: 31 July 2024 → 7 August 2024.
-
logLast day with fire: 10 August 2024 → 12 August 2024.
-
logStart date: 7 August 2024 → 31 July 2024.
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/mossaka-2024-08-3?v=2026-10-27A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire mossaka-2024-08-3.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-08-07 | 2 | 6 | 32.3 | 23.7 | 54 | 15.4 | 36 | 0 | 26 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-08 | 3 | 4 | 32.1 | 23.6 | 54 | 11.9 | 29.2 | 0 | 24.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-08-09 | 13 | 154 | 32.2 | 23.4 | 48 | 10.5 | 21.6 | 0 | 20.1 | moderado | 1 |
| 2024-08-10 | 4 | 28 | 32.4 | 24.8 | 55 | 9.4 | 23 | 0.5 | 20.8 | moderado | 1 |
| 2024-08-11 | 0 | 0 | 27.7 | 24.6 | 70 | 8.4 | 17.3 | 1.7 | 8.9 | bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,332ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 7 Aug 2024 – 10 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 7 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 22
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 48MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
7 Aug10 Aug
10 Aug 2024
How it evolved, day by day
7 Aug
8 Aug
9 Aug
10 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
32°high
36km/h · peak gust
48%lowest humidity
It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 11 Aug.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Mossaka where it started1,341 ha0.1 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Aug | 32.3 °C | 54 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 8 Aug | 32.1 °C | 54 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 9 Aug | 32.2 °C | 48 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 10 Aug | 32.4 °C | 55 % | 23 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 11 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 70 % | 17 km/h | 1.7 mm | Low 9 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 26.0, a minimum humidity of 54% and 45 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 6.
FWI at the start
26.0
Minimum humidity
54 %
Days without rain
45
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Mossaka fire, August 2024
1,332 ha
4 days
FWI 26.0
Min. humidity 54 %
Djambala fire, July 2024
1,085 ha
4 days
FWI 19.0
Min. humidity 54 %
215 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Djambala fire, August 2020
1,510 ha
7 days
FWI 22.7
Min. humidity 52 %
182 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 14 Aug.
Owando fire, July 2024
1,561 ha
4 days
FWI 16.6
Min. humidity 54 %
96 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Djambala fire, July 2024
1,092 ha
4 days
FWI 24.2
Min. humidity 52 %
176 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Gamboma fire, July 2024
1,050 ha
4 days
FWI 20.2
Min. humidity 57 %
164 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 6. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
1.7 mmfirst rain
11 Augthe day after it ended
36km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 10 Aug, and on 11 Aug 1.7 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 31 Jul 2024
After · 17 Aug 2024
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mossaka fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 August 2024 and 10 August 2024: 4 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 1,332 hectares (13.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mossaka (1,341 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 48 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Republic of the Congo (geoBoundaries ADM2). 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 12 August 2024 → 10 August 2024.
- Start date: 31 July 2024 → 7 August 2024.
- Last day with fire: 10 August 2024 → 12 August 2024.
- Start date: 7 August 2024 → 31 July 2024.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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
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. 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.
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 (Map Library 2007, nombres de Wikidata) (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.