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Pebane fire, 15 September 2023 Pebane

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2023, 10:34 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2023 in Pebane, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,149 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 494th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 72 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pebane · 2016Pebane · 2020Pebane · 2025Pebane · 2026

Burnt area
4,149ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
15 Sept 2023 – 26 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Sept
2023
Heat detections
151
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
138MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept26 Sept
26 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Sept 2023 · 10 MW · 1 16 Sept 2023 · 33 MW · 8 17 Sept 2023 · 949 MW · 86 18 Sept 2023 · 167 MW · 21 19 Sept 2023 · 10 MW · 1 20 Sept 2023 · 4 MW · 1 21 Sept 2023 · 52 MW · 2 24 Sept 2023 · 92 MW · 14 25 Sept 2023 · 27 MW · 7 26 Sept 2023 · 41 MW · 10
15 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept 21 Sept 25 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

37°high
44km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 707 ha in 2016, 840 ha in 2017, 1,447 ha in 2018, 652 ha in 2019, 1,449 ha in 2020, 1,415 ha in 2021, 1,063 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,825 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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. Pebane where it started
    4,173 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.4 %

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 area0.20 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.20 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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)
17 Sept 37.3 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Sept 32.8 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept 29.9 °C 54 % 30 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 17
20 Sept 32.8 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Sept 34.5 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Sept 33.0 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Sept 35.6 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept 35.2 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
25 Sept 33.7 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
26 Sept 36.2 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Sept after 36.0 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Sept after 34.8 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Sept after 35.1 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Sept after 35.7 °C 26 % 37 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 · 8 Sept 2023
After · 3 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 19 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1068 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
151617181920212223
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 · 151Every 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 Pebane fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2023 to 26 September 2023 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2023 to 20 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,149 hectares (41.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pebane (4,173 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 44 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 September 2023 → 26 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 17 September 2023 → 15 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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2023 to 20 September 2023. 151 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.