Tonj North fire, May 2023 Tonj North
The fire started on 2 May 2023 in Tonj North, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,563 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 15th largest in Warrap since 2016 (of 49 with a page). Number 37 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 9,563ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 2 May 2023 – 16 May 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 2 May
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 322
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 289MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,766 ha in 2016, 9,651 ha in 2017, 6,045 ha in 2018, 8,814 ha in 2019, 7,136 ha in 2020, 3,435 ha in 2021, 6,644 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,622 ha that had burned before.
- 5,544 ha Tonj North fire, April 2020 10,212 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,481 ha Tonj North fire, April 2017 14,292 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,779 ha Tonj North fire, March 2019 10,274 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,496 ha Tonj North fire, April 2018 6,581 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,435 ha Tonj North fire, May 2021 6,000 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 648 ha Tonj North fire, April 2019 6,176 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
-
Tonj North where it started9,635 ha0.8 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 May | 36.0 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 3 May | 39.0 °C | 19 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 May | 37.7 °C | 23 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 5 May | 39.2 °C | 21 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 6 May | 41.3 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 7 May | 37.2 °C | 28 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 8 May | 39.9 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 May | 39.4 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 10 May | 37.8 °C | 29 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 11 May | 39.7 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very high 43 |
| 12 May | 40.1 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 13 May | 40.6 °C | 24 % | 36 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 45 |
| 14 May | 41.0 °C | 19 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 15 May | 41.5 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 16 May | 41.4 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.5 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 17 May after | 38.6 °C | 30 % | 42 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very high 50 |
| 18 May after | 37.8 °C | 31 % | 37 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 36 |
| 19 May after | 39.5 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 40 |
| 20 May after | 40.2 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 May after | 40.9 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 May after | 40.8 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 23 May after | 38.9 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 May after | 39.3 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 49 |
| 25 May after | 40.1 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 26 May after | 39.9 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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 7 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 55 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 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 · 0Every 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 Tonj North fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 May 2023 and 16 May 2023: 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 9,563 hectares (95.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tonj North (9,635 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.
- Last day with fire: 23 May 2023 → 16 May 2023.
- Start date: 26 April 2023 → 2 May 2023.
- Last day with fire: 16 May 2023 → 23 May 2023.
- Start date: 2 May 2023 → 26 April 2023.
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. 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.