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Mpulungu fire, 1 September 2020 Mpulungu

Out · last detection 7 Sept 2020, 12:04 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2020 in Mpulungu, Zambia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,502 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 213th largest in Northern since 2016 (of 628 with a page). Number 82 in Zambia in 2020, of 229.

Burnt area
5,502ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
1 Sept 2020 – 6 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2020
Heat detections
203
in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

7 Sept 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept6 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
52km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,215 ha in 2016, 3,048 ha in 2017, 84 ha in 2018, 2,481 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,389 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mpulungu where it started
    5,537 ha reached on 26 Aug
    0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
1 Sept 30.2 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Sept 28.1 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Sept 26.9 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 28.3 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Sept 28.2 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Sept 28.7 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Sept after 27.8 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept after 28.1 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Sept after 27.1 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Sept after 27.5 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Sept after 28.8 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Sept after 28.0 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Sept after 28.8 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Sept after 29.5 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept after 29.8 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Sept after 30.0 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2020
After · 13 Sept 2020

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 · 203Every 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 Zambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mpulungu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2020 and 6 September 2020: 6 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 5,502 hectares (55.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mpulungu (5,537 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zambia (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

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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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 4.0 (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.