Ain al Arab fire, 20 June 2019 Ain al Arab
The fire started on 20 June 2019 in Ain al Arab, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,280 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 8th largest in Aleppo since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 35 in Syria in 2019, of 163.
The power measured by the satellite is low (22.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,280ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 20 Jun 2019 – 21 Jun 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 20 Jun
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 7
- in a single hotspot: 23 MW
- Danger at start
- 55
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 110MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
21 Jun 2019 · 110 MW · 7
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 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Ain al Arab where it started1,281 ha reached on 21 Jun1.7 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.
What burned
- Agricultural areas80 %
- Other natural land20 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jun | 32.8 °C | 26 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 21 Jun | 35.5 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 22 Jun after | 36.5 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 23 Jun after | 37.7 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 24 Jun after | 39.5 °C | 11 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 25 Jun after | 41.2 °C | 11 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 26 Jun after | 43.1 °C | 6 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 27 Jun after | 42.8 °C | 14 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 28 Jun after | 40.0 °C | 16 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 29 Jun after | 38.7 °C | 8 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 30 Jun after | 34.2 °C | 12 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 1 Jul after | 34.0 °C | 11 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
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 · 7Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ain al Arab fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 20 June 2019 and 21 June 2019: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,280 hectares (12.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ain al Arab (1,281 ha, 1.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Syria (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.
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: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 7 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 and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 ADM3 (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 slightly from each country’s official figure.