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Pebane fire, 16 September 2023 Pebane

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2023, 11:49 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2023 in Pebane, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,249 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 118th largest in Zambézia since 2016 (of 839 with a page). Number 10 in Mozambique in 2023, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pebane · 2022Pebane · 2017Pebane · 2021Pebane · 2020

Burnt area
13,249ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
16 Sept 2023 – 8 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
16 Sept
2023
Heat detections
738
in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
373MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept8 Oct
8 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2023 · 22 MW · 2 17 Sept 2023 · 76 MW · 10 18 Sept 2023 · 251 MW · 23 19 Sept 2023 · 78 MW · 8 20 Sept 2023 · 28 MW · 4 21 Sept 2023 · 9 MW · 3 22 Sept 2023 · 137 MW · 10 23 Sept 2023 · 134 MW · 16 24 Sept 2023 · 941 MW · 94 25 Sept 2023 · 396 MW · 59 26 Sept 2023 · 570 MW · 70 27 Sept 2023 · 764 MW · 43 28 Sept 2023 · 107 MW · 26 29 Sept 2023 · 312 MW · 31 30 Sept 2023 · 509 MW · 79 1 Oct 2023 · 2,693 MW · 184 2 Oct 2023 · 26 MW · 3 4 Oct 2023 · 4 MW · 1 5 Oct 2023 · 9 MW · 2 6 Oct 2023 · 99 MW · 10 7 Oct 2023 · 207 MW · 22 8 Oct 2023 · 843 MW · 38
16 Sept 20 Sept 24 Sept 28 Sept 1 Oct 2 Oct 7 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
45km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,729 ha in 2017, 1,384 ha in 2018, 5,295 ha in 2019, 6,647 ha in 2020, 6,093 ha in 2021, 7,483 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,850 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.4% of the area of London (132 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
    13,328 ha reached on 16 Sept
    1.3 %

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 area0.48 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.48 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
16 Sept 37.4 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Sept 38.0 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Sept 34.1 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Sept 30.1 °C 50 % 27 km/h 2.2 mm Low 8
20 Sept 33.6 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Sept 35.1 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Sept 33.7 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Sept 35.6 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Sept 36.0 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
25 Sept 34.6 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Sept 37.2 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Sept 36.7 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Sept 35.9 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Sept 35.7 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Sept 36.5 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Oct 39.2 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct 33.3 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.7 mm High 29
3 Oct 28.1 °C 47 % 44 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 13
4 Oct 33.3 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Oct 34.9 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Oct 36.3 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Oct 37.9 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Oct 38.6 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Oct after 35.7 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Oct after 35.0 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
11 Oct after 35.8 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Oct after 38.3 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Oct after 40.9 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Oct after 41.9 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
15 Oct after 39.9 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Oct after 38.4 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Oct after 39.0 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 46
18 Oct after 32.5 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2023
After · 15 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 25 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth0.77
202122232425262728293012345
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 · 738Every 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 16 September 2023 to 8 October 2023 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 September 2023 to 2 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,249 hectares (132.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pebane (13,328 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very 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: 2 October 2023 → 8 October 2023.
  2. Start date: 22 September 2023 → 16 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 September 2023 to 2 October 2023. 738 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.