Skip to content
worldfires
en
MZ · Mozambique · →

Ngauma fire, September 2023 Ngauma

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2023, 10:41 UTC

The fire started on 28 September 2023 in Ngauma, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,441 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 50th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 583 with a page). Number 14 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ngauma · 2024Ngauma · 2026Ngauma · 2026Ngauma · 2025

Burnt area
11,441ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
28 Sept 2023 – 17 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
28 Sept
2023
Heat detections
616
in a single hotspot: 123 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
411MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Sept17 Oct
17 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

28 Sept 2023 · 33 MW · 3 29 Sept 2023 · 75 MW · 12 30 Sept 2023 · 226 MW · 25 1 Oct 2023 · 270 MW · 24 2 Oct 2023 · 186 MW · 14 4 Oct 2023 · 26 MW · 3 5 Oct 2023 · 160 MW · 14 6 Oct 2023 · 136 MW · 16 7 Oct 2023 · 271 MW · 31 8 Oct 2023 · 579 MW · 49 9 Oct 2023 · 718 MW · 59 10 Oct 2023 · 100 MW · 13 11 Oct 2023 · 720 MW · 32 12 Oct 2023 · 552 MW · 66 13 Oct 2023 · 1,173 MW · 104 14 Oct 2023 · 1,306 MW · 64 15 Oct 2023 · 1,049 MW · 67 16 Oct 2023 · 214 MW · 18 17 Oct 2023 · 23 MW · 2
28 Sept 1 Oct 5 Oct 8 Oct 11 Oct 14 Oct 17 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
42km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 20 Oct.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 165 ha in 2016, 164 ha in 2018, 3,368 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.2% of the area of London (114 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. Ngauma where it started
    11,507 ha reached on 28 Sept
    3.8 %

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)
28 Sept 28.0 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Sept 27.0 °C 47 % 40 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 21
30 Sept 29.7 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Oct 32.5 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Oct 30.4 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Oct 27.1 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.8 mm High 23
4 Oct 29.1 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Oct 29.3 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Oct 30.9 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Oct 31.3 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Oct 33.7 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Oct 32.0 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Oct 30.8 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
11 Oct 30.4 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Oct 32.8 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Oct 34.1 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Oct 34.3 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Oct 33.2 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Oct 33.5 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Oct 32.3 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
18 Oct after 30.4 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Oct after 29.5 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
20 Oct after 27.0 °C 55 % 34 km/h 1.9 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Sept 2023
After · 24 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 2 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak39 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1056 µg/m³
Optical depth0.73
234567891011121314151617181920
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 · 616Every 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 Ngauma fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 September 2023 to 17 October 2023 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 October 2023 to 17 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,441 hectares (114.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ngauma (11,507 ha, 3.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 4 October 2023 → 28 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.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 October 2023 to 17 October 2023. 616 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.

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.