Al Qubbah fire, July 2023 Al Qubbah
The fire started on 22 July 2023 in Al Qubbah, Libya, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 258 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
The only fire in Libya with a page in 2023.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Al Qubbah · 2021
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 258ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 22 Jul 2023 – 22 Jul 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 22 Jul
- 2023
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 44 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.
What happened to each town
-
Al Qubbah where it started261 ha0.0 %
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
- Mixed forest53 %
- Other natural land39 %
- Broadleaved forest7.4 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Jul | 34.3 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Jul after | 34.6 °C | 24 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Jul after | 34.3 °C | 35 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Jul after | 35.1 °C | 29 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 26 Jul after | 37.7 °C | 19 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 27 Jul after | 31.6 °C | 34 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 28 Jul after | 29.0 °C | 55 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 29 Jul after | 29.4 °C | 48 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 30 Jul after | 29.6 °C | 54 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 31 Jul after | 29.1 °C | 54 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Aug after | 31.7 °C | 42 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 24 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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)
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Al Qubbah fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 22 July 2023 and 22 July 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 258 hectares (2.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Al Qubbah (261 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Libya (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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2025, 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 ADM1 (Public Domain). 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.