Aso fire, 9 March 2025 阿蘇市 · Aso
The fire started on 9 March 2025 in Aso, Japan, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 460 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 33th largest in Kumamoto since 2016 (of 92 with a page). Number 9 in Japan in 2025, of 24.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Aso · 2020Aso · 2019Aso · 2022Aso · 2018
- Burnt area
- 460ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 9 Mar 2025 – 9 Mar 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 9 Mar
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 22
- in a single hotspot: 32 MW
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 225MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
9 Mar 2025 · 225 MW · 22
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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 10 Mar.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 281 ha in 2018, 321 ha in 2019, 350 ha in 2020, 307 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 400 ha that had burned before.
- 350 ha Aso fire, March 2020 435 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 321 ha Aso fire, March 2019 401 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 307 ha Aso fire, March 2022 4,010 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 281 ha Aso fire, March 2018 344 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
462 ha1.2 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Mar | 10.8 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 10 Mar after | 10.9 °C | 37 % | 27 km/h | 1.4 mm | Very low 0 |
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 9 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 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 · 22Every 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 Aso fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 March 2025 and 9 March 2025: 1 day between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 460 hectares (4.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Aso (462 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 10.8 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 0, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Japan (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: 119
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 22 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.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 ADM2 (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 from each country’s official figure.