Pama fire, 16 November 2022 Pama
The fire started on 16 November 2022 in Pama, Burkina Faso, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,013 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 518th largest in Goulmou since 2016 (of 529 with a page). Number 107 in Burkina Faso in 2022, of 109.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Pama · 2019Pama · 2016Pama · 2020Pama · 2017
- Burnt area
- 1,013ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 16 Nov 2022 – 16 Nov 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 16 Nov
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 26
- in a single hotspot: 32 MW
- Average daily power
- 366MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
16 Nov 2022 · 366 MW · 25
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 371 ha in 2016, 198 ha in 2017, 588 ha in 2019, 393 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 968 ha that had burned before.
- 588 ha Pama fire, November 2019 4,851 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 348 ha Pama fire, November 2016 2,737 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 307 ha Pama fire, December 2020 16,698 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 198 ha Pama fire, November 2017 2,354 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 86 ha Pama fire, January 2020 2,281 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 24 ha Pama fire, December 2016 1,283 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Pama where it started1,021 ha reached on 16 Nov0.2 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.
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
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 17 November 2022 the air beside the fire reached 125 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 79: 5.3 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 · 26Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,698 haPama14 December 2020 · 18 days · 4 km away
- 43,278 haPama12 November 2024 · 20 days · 7 km away
- 39,204 haMadjoari9 November 2017 · 13 days · 18 km away
- 9,283 haPama30 November 2021 · 13 days · 31 km away
- 22,723 haMadjoari29 November 2021 · 13 days · 36 km away
- 13,536 haPama16 November 2016 · 4 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pama fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 November 2022 and 16 November 2022: 1 day 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 1,013 hectares (10.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Pama (1,021 ha, 0.2 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Burkina Faso (OCHA COD-AB). 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.
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. 26 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 OCHA COD-AB (Institut Geographique Burkina (IGB)) (Creative Commons Attribution for Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY-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.