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Ngauma fire, 1 September 2025 Ngauma, Mandimba

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2025, 10:37 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2025 in Ngauma, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,427 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 434th largest in Niassa since 2016 (of 577 with a page). Number 245 in Mozambique in 2025, of 313.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ngauma · 2023Ngauma · 2026Ngauma · 2024Ngauma · 2026

Burnt area
3,427ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
1 Sept 2025 – 15 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2025
Heat detections
148
in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
54MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept15 Sept
15 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2025 · 30 MW · 5 3 Sept 2025 · 51 MW · 7 4 Sept 2025 · 33 MW · 5 5 Sept 2025 · 122 MW · 13 6 Sept 2025 · 64 MW · 7 7 Sept 2025 · 56 MW · 10 8 Sept 2025 · 88 MW · 11 9 Sept 2025 · 41 MW · 4 10 Sept 2025 · 27 MW · 4 11 Sept 2025 · 18 MW · 4 12 Sept 2025 · 17 MW · 4 13 Sept 2025 · 185 MW · 8 14 Sept 2025 · 5 MW · 1 15 Sept 2025 · 10 MW · 2
1 Sept 4 Sept 6 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept

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
40km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8 ha in 2017, 339 ha in 2022, 461 ha in 2023, 841 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,207 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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
    3,225 ha reached on 26 Aug
    1.1 %
  2. Mandimba
    223 ha reached on 27 Aug
    0.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 Sept 28.9 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Sept 26.6 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Sept 27.3 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Sept 29.8 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Sept 29.5 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Sept 29.4 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Sept 28.3 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Sept 28.9 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept 29.1 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Sept 30.3 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Sept 29.3 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Sept 29.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Sept 29.0 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Sept 29.3 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Sept 27.7 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
16 Sept after 30.6 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Sept after 31.4 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Sept after 30.5 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept after 30.4 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
20 Sept after 28.4 °C 38 % 40 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2025
After · 22 Sept 2025

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 5 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak64 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM1066 µg/m³
Optical depth0.96
3031123456789101112131415161718
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 · 148Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2025 and 15 September 2025: 15 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 3,427 hectares (34.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ngauma (3,225 ha, 1.1 %); Mandimba (223 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 40 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

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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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. 148 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 2025, 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.