How long did the Pibor fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 January 2026 and 16 January 2026: 13 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 25,046 hectares (250.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Pibor (25,215 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 34 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 South Sudan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SS · South Sudan · 2026-01-04 → 2026-01-16

Pibor fire, 4 January 2026 Pibor

Out · last detection 17 Jan 2026, 12:02 UTC

The fire started on 4 January 2026 in Pibor, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,046 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 427 with a page). Number 13 in South Sudan in 2026, of 182.

Burnt area: 25,046ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 4 Jan 2026 – 16 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 4 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 786; in a single hotspot: 146 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Energy released: 10.7GW; sum of detected power

Play back 17 Jan 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jan16 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

4567891011121314151617

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

34km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,359 ha in 2016, 265 ha in 2017, 4,330 ha in 2018, 4,125 ha in 2020, 8,670 ha in 2021, 1,546 ha in 2022, 708 ha in 2023, 8,939 ha in 2024, 46 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19,492 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Pibor where it started

25,215 ha reached on 1 Jan

0.8 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
4 Jan	36.6 °C	19 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Jan	36.3 °C	22 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Jan	36.7 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Jan	37.5 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Jan	37.1 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Jan	36.4 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Jan	35.9 °C	21 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
11 Jan	36.3 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Jan	36.5 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
13 Jan	37.2 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
14 Jan	36.0 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
15 Jan	35.9 °C	22 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
16 Jan	34.8 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
17 Jan after	36.7 °C	19 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
18 Jan after	37.0 °C	24 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Jan after	36.8 °C	22 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Jan after	37.4 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 38
21 Jan after	38.3 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
22 Jan after	38.7 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
23 Jan after	38.0 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
24 Jan after	39.5 °C	19 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
25 Jan after	39.4 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
26 Jan after	39.1 °C	16 %	23 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 · 28 Dec 2025

After · 23 Jan 2026

Before After

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 11 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 94 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 61: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak94 µg/m³

Days over the guideline17 days

PM1098 µg/m³

Optical depth0.99

WHO 15

2345678910111213141516171819

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 · 786Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pibor fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 January 2026 and 16 January 2026: 13 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 25,046 hectares (250.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Pibor (25,215 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 34 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 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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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.

Where it burned