Arib fire, 8 August 2020 Arib
The fire started on 8 August 2020 in Arib, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 239 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 29th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 121 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.
The power measured by the satellite is low (4.2 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
- 239ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 8 Aug 2020 – 14 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 8 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 2
- in a single hotspot: 4 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 7MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
12 Aug 2020 · 7 MW · 2
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 more than two months 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
-
Arib where it started240 ha reached on 12 Aug1.1 %
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
- Other natural land56 %
- Mixed forest43 %
- Broadleaved forest0.8 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Aug | 30.3 °C | 23 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Aug | 27.3 °C | 38 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 13 Aug | 26.9 °C | 48 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 14 Aug | 27.8 °C | 45 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 15 Aug after | 26.1 °C | 59 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 16 Aug after | 26.8 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Aug after | 26.5 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Aug after | 25.4 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 19 Aug after | 28.3 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Aug after | 28.4 °C | 46 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 21 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 53 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 23 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 42 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 24 Aug after | 25.2 °C | 55 % | 45 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 13 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily 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)
Detections table · 2Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,022 haAribJuly 2017 · 4 days · 3 km away
- 1,209 haMesselmoun25 July 2020 · 5 days · 6 km away
- 2,102 haMesselmounNovember 2025 · 2 days · 14 km away
- 3,363 haEl Amra العامرةAugust 2021 · 5 days · 16 km away
- 1,093 haMesselmounAugust 2022 · 2 days · 19 km away
- 1,368 haGouraya قورايةNovember 2020 · 1 day · 20 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Arib fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 August 2020 to 14 August 2020 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2020 to 14 August 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 239 hectares (2.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Arib (240 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (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.
Emergency number: 14 · 1021 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 August 2020 to 14 August 2020. 2 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-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.