Ngauma fire, September 2024 Ngauma
The fire started on 9 September 2024 in Ngauma, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,901 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 85th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 577 with a page). Number 25 in Mozambique in 2024, of 150.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Ngauma · 2023Ngauma · 2026Ngauma · 2026Ngauma · 2026
- Burnt area
- 7,901ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 9 Sept 2024 – 21 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 9 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 517
- in a single hotspot: 150 MW
- Danger at start
- 25
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 516MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 23 Sept.
This area had burned before
58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 394 ha in 2016, 507 ha in 2018, 801 ha in 2022, 3,755 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,546 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Ngauma where it started7,945 ha reached on 2 Sept2.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Sept | 29.7 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 10 Sept | 29.1 °C | 31 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 11 Sept | 28.4 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 12 Sept | 28.8 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 13 Sept | 30.6 °C | 30 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 14 Sept | 30.6 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 15 Sept | 30.0 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 16 Sept | 29.4 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Sept | 29.4 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Sept | 28.8 °C | 32 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 19 Sept | 29.7 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 20 Sept | 30.0 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Sept | 30.3 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 22 Sept after | 27.1 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 23 Sept after | 25.5 °C | 56 % | 48 km/h | 2.7 mm | Low 9 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 12 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 517Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,892 haNgauma3 September 2026 · 24 days · 8 km away
- 15,363 haNgauma October 2026 · 20 days · 9 km away
- 11,441 haNgauma4 October 2023 · 14 days · 11 km away
- 7,182 haNgauma3 September 2026 · 19 days · 22 km away
- 5,695 haMandimba4 September 2026 · 24 days · 27 km away
- 5,822 haMajune6 September 2026 · 12 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ngauma fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2024 and 21 September 2024: 13 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 7,901 hectares (79.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ngauma (7,945 ha, 2.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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
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. 517 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 (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.