Pibor fire, 28 November 2024 Pibor
The fire started on 28 November 2024 in Pibor, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,587 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 73th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 427 with a page). Number 31 in South Sudan in 2024, of 180.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Pibor · 2023Pibor · 2019Pibor · 2026Pibor · 2021
- Burnt area
- 13,587ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 28 Nov 2024 – 12 Dec 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 28 Nov
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 586
- in a single hotspot: 93 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 359MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,355 ha in 2016, 4,353 ha in 2019, 4,419 ha in 2022, 2,115 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,007 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Pibor where it started13,680 ha reached on 23 Nov0.4 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Nov | 33.9 °C | 16 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 29 Nov | 33.9 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 27 |
| 30 Nov | 36.4 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 1 Dec | 35.8 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 2 Dec | 35.6 °C | 19 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 3 Dec | 36.3 °C | 30 % | 21 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 4 Dec | 35.3 °C | 26 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Dec | 36.1 °C | 26 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 6 Dec | 36.4 °C | 24 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Dec | 37.2 °C | 24 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 8 Dec | 37.7 °C | 18 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 9 Dec | 38.3 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 10 Dec | 37.7 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 11 Dec | 37.5 °C | 26 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 12 Dec | 36.5 °C | 26 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 13 Dec after | 36.6 °C | 25 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 14 Dec after | 37.2 °C | 22 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 15 Dec after | 36.9 °C | 19 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 16 Dec after | 36.7 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Dec after | 36.6 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 18 Dec after | 35.6 °C | 29 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 19 Dec after | 36.9 °C | 23 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Dec after | 37.5 °C | 24 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 21 Dec after | 37.3 °C | 18 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Dec after | 34.9 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
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 11 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 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 · 586Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pibor fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 November 2024 and 12 December 2024: 15 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 13,587 hectares (135.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Pibor (13,680 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
- 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 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. 586 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.
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.