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CM · Cameroon · →

Tabati fire, December 2022 Tabati

Out · last detection 23 Dec 2022, 12:16 UTC

The fire started on 23 December 2022 in Tabati, Cameroon, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,160 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 160th largest in Adamaoua since 2016 (of 233 with a page). Number 143 in Cameroon in 2022, of 201.

Burnt area
1,160ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
23 Dec 2022 – 24 Dec 2022
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
23 Dec
2022
Heat detections
16
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Energy released
255MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Dec24 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

23

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

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 483 ha in 2016, 663 ha in 2020, 461 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 896 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Tabati where it started
    1,167 ha reached on 23 Dec
    0.1 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Dec 2022
After · 31 Dec 2022

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 · 16Every 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 Cameroon ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tabati fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 December 2022 and 24 December 2022: 2 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 1,160 hectares (11.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tabati (1,167 ha, 0.1 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cameroon (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.

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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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.