West Gonja fire, 23 January 2022 West Gonja, North Gonja
The fire started on 23 January 2022 in West Gonja, Ghana, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,802 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 76th largest in Savannah since 2016 (of 335 with a page). Number 23 in Ghana in 2022, of 118.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,802ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 23 Jan 2022 – 31 Jan 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 23 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 106
- in a single hotspot: 174 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 122MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,231 ha in 2016, 1,011 ha in 2017, 2,370 ha in 2018, 2,357 ha in 2020, 2,349 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,712 ha that had burned before.
- 1,459 ha West Gonja fire, January 2020 3,405 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,158 ha West Gonja fire, December 2016 2,866 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,000 ha West Gonja fire, December 2018 2,200 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 626 ha West Gonja fire, December 2020 2,506 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
-
West Gonja where it started3,828 ha reached on 23 Jan0.8 %
-
1 ha0.0 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Jan | 32.7 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 24 Jan | 34.7 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 25 Jan | 33.0 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 26 Jan | 34.3 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 27 Jan | 35.1 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 28 Jan | 34.4 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 29 Jan | 34.2 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 30 Jan | 35.1 °C | 14 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 31 Jan | 34.1 °C | 10 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 1 Feb after | 34.4 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 2 Feb after | 34.9 °C | 13 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 3 Feb after | 34.8 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 4 Feb after | 35.0 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 5 Feb after | 33.7 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 6 Feb after | 34.5 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Feb after | 35.3 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 8 Feb after | 36.1 °C | 12 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 9 Feb after | 37.0 °C | 9 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 10 Feb after | 36.8 °C | 10 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
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.
Detections table · 106Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,387 haWest Gonja19 December 2024 · 11 days · 10 km away
- 16,132 haWest Gonja5 December 2023 · 29 days · 16 km away
- 10,048 haNorth Gonja3 December 2023 · 18 days · 17 km away
- 13,191 haWest Gonja14 December 2019 · 23 days · 21 km away
- 13,051 haWest Gonja19 December 2020 · 15 days · 21 km away
- 35,022 haSawla-Tuna-Kalba15 November 2017 · 28 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the West Gonja fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 January 2022 and 31 January 2022: 9 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 3,802 hectares (38.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: West Gonja (3,828 ha, 0.8 %); North Gonja (1 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ghana (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.
Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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. 106 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 2020, 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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.