Fire near Atsimo-Andrefana (MG)

22.17°S, 44.97°E · first detected on 15 October at 15:06

What the satellites measured

This fire was tracked from 15 October at 15:06 to 22 October at 13:49, that is 7 days, through 152 satellite detections. The detected extent reaches 1,551 ha.

Detected extent
1,551 ha
Cumulative power
1,507 MW
Peak power, one pixel
58 MW
VIIRS and MODIS detections
152
Estimated emissions
3.0 kt of carbon
Carbon burnt in the 0.1 degree cells (about 10 km) around the fire, from 15 October 2026 to 21 October 2026. An order-of-magnitude estimate from GFAS (ECMWF, Copernicus CAMS): it also counts neighbouring fires in the same cell. Contains modified Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service information (2026). Published data stop on 21 October 2026.

These four figures cover the polar orbits alone, the ones that measure an area. The pass table below also counts geostationary detections, more frequent but too coarse for geometry, and its power column sums a whole pass where the peak above is that of a single pixel.

“Detected extent” is not “burned area”: it is the union of the ground footprints of the satellite pixels, and a pixel counts in full (375 m for VIIRS, 1 km for MODIS) even when only a forest edge is burning. Compared with press figures it is in practice one and a half to three times the area reported. Detections taken at the edge of the scan swath, too coarse to measure anything at all, are excluded. These figures come from thermal detection and are not an official assessment: only the emergency services and the competent authorities are authoritative.

Replay how the fire spread

The map is framed on this fire's footprint and loads only its detections. The timeline below covers the period in which satellites saw it, from the first to the last detection, with twelve hours before and twenty-four after; the ticks on the bar mark the emergency services' announcements that fall within it. The cursor opens on the most powerful pass, and playback replays the whole fire in about thirty seconds. “1 h” shows what is burning within an hour of the chosen moment : the map then follows the power curve below and empties when it falls. “24 h” stacks twenty-four hours : a fire stays visible between two satellite passes, which come two to four times a day. Both are true, but they say different things.

How the radiative power evolved

One point per satellite pass: the sum of the fire radiative power measured over the fire. This is the curve that says whether the fire eased off or picked up again, which no cumulative figure shows. The window covers 9 days; beyond that, clustering would merge two successive fires in the same place.

Fire dynamics

Loading history…

Satellite passes in detail

PassPower summed over the passDetectionsSensor
23 October at 00:251 MW1N21
22 October at 23:401 MW1N20
22 October at 16:0421 MW1Met9
22 October at 15:4928 MW1Met9
22 October at 15:3431 MW1Met9
22 October at 15:3213 MW1Met12
22 October at 15:2227 MW2Met12
22 October at 15:1947 MW1Met9
22 October at 15:1238 MW2Met12
22 October at 15:0354 MW1Met9
22 October at 15:0223 MW1Met12
22 October at 14:5253 MW2Met12
22 October at 14:4868 MW1Met9
22 October at 14:4257 MW2Met12
22 October at 14:3384 MW3Met9
22 October at 14:32110 MW3Met12
22 October at 14:22180 MW4Met12
22 October at 14:18272 MW4Met9
22 October at 14:12103 MW2Met12
22 October at 14:03288 MW3Met9
22 October at 14:02172 MW4Met12
22 October at 13:5248 MW2Met12
22 October at 13:4934 MW3N
22 October at 13:4888 MW2Met9
22 October at 13:3340 MW1Met9
22 October at 13:1842 MW1Met9
22 October at 13:10105 MW9N21
22 October at 12:2623 MW3N20
22 October at 12:094 MW1N
21 October at 13:3034 MW3N21
21 October at 13:0218 MW1Met12
21 October at 12:4552 MW6N20
21 October at 12:2631 MW5N
21 October at 12:2221 MW1Met12
21 October at 00:161 MW2N20
20 October at 15:4211 MW1Met12
20 October at 15:2222 MW2Met12
20 October at 15:0235 MW2Met12
20 October at 14:1870 MW1Met9
20 October at 14:1226 MW1Met12
20 October at 14:0259 MW2Met12
20 October at 13:5257 MW2Met12
20 October at 13:4236 MW1Met12
20 October at 13:3230 MW1Met12
20 October at 13:2258 MW1Met12
20 October at 13:1298 MW2Met12
20 October at 13:04253 MW11N20
20 October at 12:5297 MW2Met12
20 October at 12:43139 MW13N
19 October at 13:23176 MW33N20
19 October at 13:04158 MW13N
19 October at 12:26138 MW10N21
19 October at 00:331 MW1N
18 October at 23:572 MW2N21
18 October at 15:2330 MW2Aqua
18 October at 13:2171 MW9N
18 October at 12:4533 MW2N21
18 October at 12:02193 MW19N20
17 October at 13:047 MW1N21
17 October at 12:196 MW1N20
17 October at 12:006 MW1N
16 October at 13:2317 MW2N21
15 October at 15:067 MW1Aqua

8 other fires near Atsimo-Andrefana (MG)

Separate fires, apart in time or in space, not pieces of this one. A single municipality can have several over one summer, and a forest massif often covers more than a hundred square kilometres.

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