Lebanon Nighttime Lights 2016-2025

01

Nighttime Lights (NTL) - What the Satellite Sees

NASA measures light emitted at night from space. Brighter = more electricity, more activity. We tracked all 26 Lebanese districts from 2016 to 2025. The dimming you see is not a power cut - it is a civilisational collapse recorded in light.

Geographic level

Time axis

View

Relative (2019 = 100%)

Year range

From 2016

To 2025

Key events

Overlay

IOM displacement (IDPs)

Oct 2023 onwards only

What the satellite is actually measuring:
Every light visible from space at night - a shop still open, an office running late, a factory in operation, a restaurant full of people, a generator keeping a family warm - is economic activity. The satellite doesn't measure money. It measures consequence: the light that economic life produces as a side effect. When that life contracts, the light dims.

What this chart shows:
Each coloured line is a Lebanese governorate. The pink line dominating the top is Beirut and Mount Lebanon - the economic centre of the country. Watch what happens from 2019: the lines don't just dip, they fall and stay down. The 2019 financial collapse, the 2020 Beirut explosion, and the 2021 fuel crisis stack on top of each other. By 2022, most of Lebanon is emitting one-third of the light it produced three years earlier. The recovery from 2023 onwards is real but partial - the informal dollarised economy brought some lights back on, but the country never returned to its 2019 level.

Why economists use nighttime light as a proxy for GDP:
In a normal country, you measure economic output through official statistics - tax records, trade data, bank transactions. Lebanon's official data became unreliable after 2019: multiple exchange rates, a collapsed banking system, and a largely informal cash economy made the numbers meaningless. Nighttime light gives researchers an independent signal that cannot be manipulated, does not depend on a government reporting accurately, and updates monthly. The World Bank, the IMF, and academic economists routinely use NTL to estimate economic activity in conflict zones and countries with broken statistical systems. For Lebanon, it may be the most honest economic indicator available.

The one thing this chart cannot show:
NTL measures aggregate brightness - it cannot distinguish between a dark neighbourhood because people are poor versus dark because people left. That is why we cross-reference with the IOM displacement data: the combination of the two tells you not just that an area went dark, but why.

District-by-district data

All 26 Lebanese districts: peak radiance, lowest point, % lost, and recovery by 2025. Click any column header to sort.

District ↕	Peak radiance ↓	Lowest point ↕	% lost ↕	2025 level ↕	% recovered ↕

02

District Map - Where Did the Lights Go?

Each district is coloured by the average nighttime radiance that year. Click any year below the map to see how the darkness spread. Yellow = bright. Dark red = almost no light. The south in 2024 is almost black.

District ranking for year: 2022

Drag to change year

03

What Caused the Darkness? - Two Separate Collapses

Lebanon's lights went out in two distinct waves. The first was the economic collapse - all 26 districts lost 50-80% of their light between 2019 and 2022 as the state grid failed. The second followed from late 2023: a nationwide drop concentrated in the south and the Bekaa, with the heaviest conflict activity in the southern front districts and in Baalbek. The two dimming patterns differ in timing and geography.

Each district: orange = light lost to the economic collapse (NTL, 2019-2022). Red = conflict events recorded during the war period (ACLED, Oct 2023-Dec 2024).

The south bears the heaviest conflict load. Baalbek also shows significant activity - targeted by Israeli airstrikes in September-October 2024 - despite being outside the southern front. Hover over any bar for exact numbers. Orange uses the bottom axis (% of 2019 NTL peak). Red uses the top axis (event count).

How to read this chart:

Every Lebanese district gets two bars.

The orange bar shows how much light the district lost between 2019 and 2022 - that is the economic collapse. When Lebanon's financial system failed, the state electricity grid shut down, businesses closed, and families could no longer afford generators. Every single one of the 26 districts lost between 50 and 80 percent of its nighttime light. The orange bars are nearly identical across all districts - that is the point. The economic collapse hit everyone equally.

The red bar shows conflict events recorded by ACLED during the war period (October 2023 to December 2024). This is where the chart becomes a diagnostic tool: red bars only appear where fighting actually happened. The southern front - Tyre, Marjeyoun, Bint Jbeil, Hasbaya, Nabatieh - carries large red bars. Baalbek also has a significant red bar from Israeli strikes in late 2024. The rest of Lebanon has no red bar. Zero.

What this proves:
The orange bars tell you about the economic crisis. The red bars tell you about the war. Two different catastrophes, measurable separately from space - and the satellite can show you exactly which districts suffered from which cause.

A district like Bsharri has a large orange bar (hit hard by the economic collapse) and almost no red bar (the war did not reach it). Marjeyoun has both: already damaged by the economic collapse, then hit again by the war.

Note on the two axes: orange bars measure a percentage of light lost (bottom axis). Red bars measure a count of conflict events (top axis). They use different scales because they measure different things.

04

The War in the South - Three Independent Datasets

We cross-reference the satellite light data with three corroborating sources: conflict event records (ACLED), population displacement counts (IOM), and building destruction maps (UN-Habitat). All three are consistent with the satellite record.

Buildings destroyed by district - UN-Habitat satellite analysis, Dec 2024 (Copernicus EMS national data pending)

Source: UN-Habitat / University of Balamand / CREEMO. Bars show % of pre-conflict buildings that were totally or partially destroyed. Why is Beirut not here? This assessment covered only the South and Nabatiyeh governorates - the conflict zone. Beirut's buildings were not assessed because it was not part of the ground war.

Important caveat - data as of December 2024 only: Since March 2026, a new wave of conflict has fundamentally changed this picture. The Nabatiyeh area has been significantly targeted in a new round of strikes, and Bint Jbeil has reportedly suffered near-total destruction. The figures shown above no longer reflect the current situation on the ground. Updated satellite damage assessments are not yet available. This chart will be revised once new assessment data is published.

NASA thermal anomaly record - southern Lebanon (2000-2024, current to 2025/2026 pending update)

How NASA collects this data: NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System) uses MODIS sensors aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites to detect thermal anomalies - any ground-level heat source significantly above background temperature. It captures wildfires, agricultural burning, forest fires, industrial heat, and military bombardment (explosions, strikes, fires from shelling). The satellite cannot distinguish between heat sources from the signal alone: interpretation requires cross-referencing with conflict records, fire weather data, and ground reports.

What the peaks show: The recurring August-October spikes every year are Lebanon's wildfire and agricultural burning season - not conflict. This is a consistent background pattern visible across all years. The peaks worth noting above that baseline are: the 2006 Lebanon War (July-August 2006, unusually early in the season and far above typical fire levels); the June-July 2007 early-season anomaly, likely linked to post-2006 war vegetation damage and unexploded ordnance in the south; October 2016, one of Lebanon's worst documented wildfire seasons; the October 2020 wildfires, a catastrophic fire event that struck weeks after the Beirut port explosion when firefighting capacity was depleted; November 2021, another severe fire season; and the 2024 Israeli military campaign, which produced the largest thermal anomaly signature in 24 years of satellite record - by a wide margin, and distinguishable from fire season by both its extreme magnitude and its coincidence with verified military operations.

Why 2025-2026 are missing: The current dataset covers November 2000 to December 2024. The GEE extraction script has been updated to pull data through May 2026. Re-run gee/extract_firms_lebanon.js in the GEE Code Editor, download the new CSV to data/raw/, and run python src/firms.py && python build_static.py to update this chart.
Use the zoom tool (top right of chart) to explore specific periods.

05

The Economic Scale of Destruction

The satellite data translates into dollars. The World Bank's Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA, March 2025), conducted at the request of the Lebanese government using SAR imagery and field verification, estimates $6.8 billion in physical damage, $7.2 billion in economic losses, and $11 billion in reconstruction needs from the 2023-2024 conflict. Nabatiyeh and South governorates account for 70% of all physical damage.
Source: World Bank / CNRS-L, Lebanon RDNA, March 2025. Data covers Oct 8 2023 - Dec 20 2024. Methodology uses SAR + high-resolution satellite imagery + field teams + ACLED incident cross-reference.

Physical damage by governorate (US$ millions)

Nabatiyeh and South bear 70% of all physical destruction. Baalbek-Hermel and the Bekaa also suffered significant damage from Israeli strikes.

Damage, losses and reconstruction needs by sector

Housing accounts for 67% of all physical damage and 57% of all reconstruction needs ($6.3B). Commerce and tourism losses ($3.4B) reflect the nationwide economic paralysis.

06

Comparing Lebanon with Neighbouring Countries

One of the most important findings: Lebanon's collapse is not a regional phenomenon. Syria, Jordan, Cyprus and Israel/OPT did not experience anything similar. This is not consistent with satellite calibration errors, regional weather patterns, or shared regional economic trends, since those would affect neighbouring countries too. Lebanon's darkness is specific to Lebanon - and to the south.

Nighttime light over time - Lebanon vs. the region (2016-2025)

All countries indexed so that 2019 = 100%. Lebanon (red) collapses. Everyone else stays flat or grows.

Annual view

How to read this chart

Think of it as a brightness meter for each country. In 2019, every country is set to 100 - that is the starting point. Everything above 100 means the country got brighter (more activity, more electricity, more economic life). Everything below 100 means it got darker.

The red line is Lebanon. Watch what happens from 2019 onwards: it falls off a cliff. By 2022, Lebanon is at roughly 30 - it lost two-thirds of its nighttime light compared to 2019. That is not a power cut. That is a country shutting down.

Now look at everyone else. Jordan stays flat and actually grows. Israel/OPT grows. Cyprus stays stable. They all float around the 100 line throughout the entire period. If the darkness was caused by a regional problem - bad weather, satellite errors, a shared economic shock - all five lines would dip together. They do not. Four countries stay completely normal while one falls apart. Lebanon's collapse is specific to Lebanon.

Note on Syria (orange): Syria's fluctuations reflect its own civil war, which started in 2011 and destroyed infrastructure years before this chart begins. The two collapses have completely different causes, timelines, and geographies. Even a country with its own catastrophic war does not show the same sharp 2019 collapse that Lebanon does.

Regional satellite map - click a year to compare

All countries on the same colour scale. Yellow = high radiance. Dark red = low radiance. Hover over any country for exact values. Israel/OPT includes West Bank and Gaza boundaries (geoBoundaries / geoboundaries.org).