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Arib fire, 27 August 2020 Arib, Messelmoun

Out · last detection 29 Aug 2020, 13:27 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2020 in Arib, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 827 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 8th largest in Tipaza since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 28 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.

Burnt area
827ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
27 Aug 2020 – 29 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
27 Aug
2020
Heat detections
41
in a single hotspot: 139 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

29 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug29 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

2829

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

35°high
60km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 8 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Arib where it started
    828 ha reached on 28 Aug
    3.8 %
  2. Messelmoun
    1 ha reached on 29 Aug
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Mixed forest57 %
  • Other natural land39 %
  • Broadleaved forest4.1 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
27 Aug 32.9 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Aug 35.4 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Aug 33.4 °C 17 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
30 Aug after 25.8 °C 36 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
31 Aug after 26.1 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
1 Sept after 29.3 °C 18 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Sept after 23.8 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm High 31
3 Sept after 25.7 °C 37 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Sept after 29.7 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Sept after 26.5 °C 47 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Sept after 26.6 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept after 27.3 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
8 Sept after 22.6 °C 50 % 44 km/h 2.2 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 20 Aug 2020
After · 5 Sept 2020

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 · Copernicus

On 29 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1038 µg/m³
252627282930311
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 41Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Arib fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 27 August 2020 and 29 August 2020: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 827 hectares (8.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Arib (828 ha, 3.8 %); Messelmoun (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
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

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 14 · 1021.

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.