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North Gonja fire, 3 December 2023 North Gonja, Sawla-Tuna-Kalba

Out · last detection 20 Dec 2023, 14:10 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2023 in North Gonja, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,048 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 13th largest in Savannah since 2016 (of 335 with a page). Number 2 in Ghana in 2023, of 77.

Compare with…

Suggestions: North Gonja · 2021Sawla-Tuna-Kalba · 2017Sawla-Tuna-Kalba · 2019Sawla-Tuna-Kalba · 2018

Burnt area
10,048ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
3 Dec 2023 – 20 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
3 Dec
2023
Heat detections
345
in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
302MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec20 Dec
20 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 2023 · 200 MW · 9 4 Dec 2023 · 31 MW · 4 6 Dec 2023 · 112 MW · 15 7 Dec 2023 · 573 MW · 21 8 Dec 2023 · 787 MW · 45 9 Dec 2023 · 659 MW · 45 10 Dec 2023 · 286 MW · 26 11 Dec 2023 · 169 MW · 12 12 Dec 2023 · 30 MW · 8 13 Dec 2023 · 160 MW · 16 14 Dec 2023 · 249 MW · 27 15 Dec 2023 · 32 MW · 14 16 Dec 2023 · 290 MW · 9 17 Dec 2023 · 1,076 MW · 40 18 Dec 2023 · 385 MW · 25 19 Dec 2023 · 61 MW · 22 20 Dec 2023 · 32 MW · 7
3 Dec 7 Dec 10 Dec 13 Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 19 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
35km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,562 ha in 2017, 1,565 ha in 2018, 4,090 ha in 2019, 1,949 ha in 2020, 4,857 ha in 2021, 2,532 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,172 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.3% of the area of London (100 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. North Gonja where it started
    6,532 ha reached on 3 Dec
    1.3 %
  2. Sawla-Tuna-Kalba
    3,581 ha reached on 7 Dec
    0.8 %

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.

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)
3 Dec 36.3 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Dec 36.2 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Dec 36.3 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Dec 36.6 °C 28 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Dec 36.0 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Dec 35.3 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Dec 35.7 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Dec 34.9 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Dec 35.1 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Dec 33.1 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Dec 31.9 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Dec 33.4 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Dec 33.4 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Dec 34.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Dec 34.3 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Dec 34.8 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Dec 33.6 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Dec 33.2 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Dec after 32.9 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Dec after 34.3 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Dec after 35.9 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Dec after 36.1 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Dec after 35.2 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Dec after 34.4 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Dec after 33.3 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Dec after 34.5 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Dec after 34.2 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Dec after 35.0 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2023
After · 27 Dec 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 10 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 204 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 112: 7.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak204 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM10456 µg/m³
Optical depth1.28
45678910111213141516171819202122
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 · 345Every 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 Ghana ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the North Gonja fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 December 2023 to 20 December 2023 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 December 2023 to 19 December 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,048 hectares (100.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: North Gonja (6,532 ha, 1.3 %); Sawla-Tuna-Kalba (3,581 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ghana (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 19 December 2023 → 20 December 2023.
  2. Start date: 6 December 2023 → 3 December 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. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 6 December 2023 to 19 December 2023. 345 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 4.0 International (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.