Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Limpopo
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 20,117 fire detections seen from space; 7,438 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2023, 31,776.
Two readings from space. Fire detections are hot spots a VIIRS satellite saw as it passed, each about 375 m across, counted where they fall in the place: a big fire gives many, a short one between passes none. Burnt area is the ground that looks burnt afterwards, from Sentinel-3 at 300 m, in hectares. Neither is a fire report from the ground.
The last twelve months
- 20,117Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 7,438 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 215 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 121 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 162 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 382 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 74 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 88 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 389 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 1,142 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 5,087 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 4,041 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 3,107 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 5,309 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 1,896 ha burnt (0.015% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 4.4 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 245 ha burnt (0.002% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 1,091 ha burnt (0.009% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 829 ha burnt (0.007% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 586 ha burnt (0.005% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 2,787 ha burnt (0.022% of the place) |
| June 2026 | not out yet |
| July 2026 | not out yet |
| August 2026 | not out yet |
| September 2026 | not out yet |
| October 2026 | not out yet |
| Month | Detections | Nominal or high confidence | NOAA-20 (second reading) | Burnt | Share of the place | Land seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | 5,309 | 4,522 | 5,678 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 3,107 | 2,877 | 3,125 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 4,041 | 3,756 | 4,712 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 5,087 | 4,835 | 6,268 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 1,142 | 1,077 | 1,186 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 389 | 378 | 418 | 2,787 ha | 0.022% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 88 | 86 | 146 | 586 ha | 0.005% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 74 | 67 | 123 | 829 ha | 0.007% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 382 | 303 | 362 | 1,091 ha | 0.009% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 162 | 136 | 206 | 245 ha | 0.002% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 121 | 109 | 132 | 4.4 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 215 | 186 | 283 | 1,896 ha | 0.015% | 100% |
NOAA-20 carries the same instrument as S-NPP and passes about 50 minutes apart, so its count is a second reading of the same fires, not extra fires. “Land seen” is the share of the place’s land the burnt-area product saw often enough that month to tell.
The worst years
- 202331,776 fire detections, most in September 2023; 400,423 ha burnt
- 201424,537 fire detections, most in August 2014
- 202422,545 fire detections, most in September 2024; 331,851 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2023, 400,423 ha (3.2% of the place); 2024, 331,851 ha (2.6% of the place); 2021, 299,215 ha (2.4% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 19,781 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 20,072 | 271,796 ha | 2.2% |
| 2024 | 22,545 | 331,851 ha | 2.6% |
| 2023 | 31,776 | 400,423 ha | 3.2% |
| 2022 | 19,755 | 238,343 ha | 1.9% |
| 2021 | 20,046 | 299,215 ha | 2.4% |
| 2020 | 9,951 | 95,375 ha | 0.76% |
| 2019 | 13,323 | 139,563 ha | 1.1% |
| 2018 | 14,439 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 13,272 | · | · |
| 2016 | 7,126 | · | · |
| 2015 | 17,155 | · | · |
| 2014 | 24,537 | · | · |
| 2013 | 18,826 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 17,116 | · | · |
Detections from February 2012 (S-NPP); burnt area from July 2018, so whole years of it from 2019. A larger place’s figures are the sums of its 2026 wards.
Source
Seen from space by American and European satellites: not fires reported on the ground.
How we worked this out
What we changed: we counted FIRMS’s detections (presumed vegetation fires only) by the 2026 ward their position falls in, and summed CLMS’s burned fraction times each pixel’s area over each ward; municipalities, districts and provinces are the sums of their wards.
Fire detections: we acknowledge the use of data and/or imagery from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), part of NASA’s LANCE (VIIRS 375 m, S-NPP and NOAA-20). Burnt area: generated using European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service information (Burnt Area 300 m version 4, DOI 10.2909/8fa58061-28ab-49bb-9b77-c26b50733e34), modified; this does not mean the European Union endorses us.
Dataset: burnt area and fire, release of 12 November 2026.