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Yambio fire, 29 December 2022 Yambio

Out · last detection 4 Jan 2023, 22:48 UTC

The fire started on 29 December 2022 in Yambio, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,339 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 330th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 107 in South Sudan in 2022, of 124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ibba · 2016Yambio · 2018Yambio · 2018Yambio · 2020

Burnt area
5,339ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
29 Dec 2022 – 3 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
29 Dec
2022
Heat detections
226
in a single hotspot: 330 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
373MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Dec3 Jan
4 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

29 Dec 2022 · 197 MW · 40 30 Dec 2022 · 1,023 MW · 37 31 Dec 2022 · 152 MW · 21 1 Jan 2023 · 1,055 MW · 33 2 Jan 2023 · 35 MW · 9 3 Jan 2023 · 35 MW · 7 4 Jan 2023 · 112 MW · 27
29 Dec 30 Dec 31 Dec 1 Jan 2 Jan 3 Jan 4 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
47km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,331 ha in 2016, 2,911 ha in 2017, 1,925 ha in 2018, 2,242 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,211 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (53 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Yambio where it started
    5,374 ha reached on 29 Dec
    0.6 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
29 Dec 33.2 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Dec 33.0 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Dec 33.5 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Jan 34.7 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Jan 33.8 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Jan 33.8 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Jan after 33.9 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Jan after 34.2 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Jan after 35.1 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Jan after 34.2 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Jan after 33.8 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Jan after 35.7 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Jan after 32.8 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Jan after 32.7 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Jan after 33.5 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Jan after 33.0 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Dec 2022
After · 10 Jan 2023

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 31 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 139 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak139 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM10199 µg/m³
Optical depth1.72
2728293031123456
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 · 226Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yambio fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 December 2022 and 3 January 2023: 6 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 5,339 hectares (53.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yambio (5,374 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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. 226 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.