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Pibor fire, 6 December 2021 Pibor

Out · last detection 15 Dec 2021, 10:29 UTC

The fire started on 6 December 2021 in Pibor, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,444 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 130th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 428 with a page). Number 70 in South Sudan in 2021, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pibor · 2024Pibor · 2025Pibor · 2026Bor South · 2025

Burnt area
9,444ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
6 Dec 2021 – 15 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
6 Dec
2021
Heat detections
325
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
429MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Dec15 Dec
15 Dec 2021

How it evolved, day by day

6 Dec 2021 · 74 MW · 11 7 Dec 2021 · 21 MW · 3 8 Dec 2021 · 1,168 MW · 79 9 Dec 2021 · 351 MW · 25 10 Dec 2021 · 1,216 MW · 66 11 Dec 2021 · 264 MW · 30 12 Dec 2021 · 696 MW · 66 13 Dec 2021 · 428 MW · 37 14 Dec 2021 · 60 MW · 5 15 Dec 2021 · 8 MW · 3
6 Dec 8 Dec 10 Dec 12 Dec 14 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

38°high
50km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6% of the area of London (94 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. Pibor where it started
    9,515 ha
    0.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area1.3 ha
Residents≈ 1,500

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 1,500 residents (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

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)
6 Dec 36.0 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Dec 36.9 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Dec 37.7 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Dec 37.4 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Dec 37.1 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Dec 37.8 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Dec 38.1 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Dec 38.2 °C 17 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Dec 37.5 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Dec 37.4 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Dec after 37.2 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Dec after 36.0 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
18 Dec after 36.7 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Dec after 37.0 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec after 34.3 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Dec after 34.7 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Dec after 35.7 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Dec after 35.9 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Dec after 36.2 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Dec after 36.3 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Nov 2021
After · 22 Dec 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 0Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pibor fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 December 2021 and 15 December 2021: 10 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 9,444 hectares (94.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pibor (9,515 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Sudan (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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 22 December 2021 → 15 December 2021.
  2. Start date: 29 November 2021 → 6 December 2021.
  3. Last day with fire: 15 December 2021 → 22 December 2021.
  4. Start date: 6 December 2021 → 29 November 2021.

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. No 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 2020, 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.