Ribaué fire, August 2024 Ribaué, Murrupula
The fire started on 11 August 2024 in Ribaué, Mozambique, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,439 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 126th largest in Nampula since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 50 in Mozambique in 2024, of 150.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Ribaué · 2020Ribaué · 2021Ribaué · 2016Ribaué · 2019
- Burnt area
- 5,439ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 11 Aug 2024 – 21 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 11 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 181
- in a single hotspot: 108 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 182MW
- 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 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 23 Aug.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,359 ha in 2016, 2,301 ha in 2017, 2,026 ha in 2018, 3,171 ha in 2019, 3,614 ha in 2020, 2,603 ha in 2021, 1,655 ha in 2022, 2,061 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,469 ha that had burned before.
- 3,614 ha Ribaué fire, August 2020 17,481 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,525 ha Ribaué fire, September 2021 6,454 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,184 ha Ribaué fire, September 2016 63,932 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,650 ha Ribaué fire, August 2019 4,149 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 829 ha Gilé fire, September 2018 25,284 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 468 ha Gilé fire, September 2022 90,638 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 335 ha Ribaué fire, September 2022 14,336 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 299 ha Ribaué fire, September 2017 53,154 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Ribaué where it started5,470 ha reached on 11 Aug0.9 %
-
11 ha reached on 11 Aug0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Aug | 30.6 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Aug | 31.0 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 13 Aug | 29.7 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Aug | 31.0 °C | 27 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 15 Aug | 30.9 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 40 |
| 16 Aug | 28.3 °C | 41 % | 42 km/h | 1.4 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 17 Aug | 27.9 °C | 37 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 18 Aug | 28.9 °C | 35 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 19 Aug | 28.4 °C | 38 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 20 Aug | 26.0 °C | 53 % | 36 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 21 Aug | 28.8 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 22 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 28 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 23 Aug after | 26.2 °C | 46 % | 36 km/h | 2.1 mm | Low 11 |
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 16 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 181Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 63,932 haRibaué9 September 2016 · 22 days · 4 km away
- 53,154 haRibaué6 September 2017 · 17 days · 11 km away
- 90,638 haGilé27 September 2022 · 18 days · 15 km away
- 70,839 haGilé8 September 2024 · 14 days · 26 km away
- 43,808 haMurrupula9 September 2025 · 22 days · 29 km away
- 145,344 haRibaué16 August 2026 · 43 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ribaué fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 August 2024 and 21 August 2024: 11 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 5,439 hectares (54.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ribaué (5,470 ha, 0.9 %); Murrupula (11 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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
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. 181 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.