Changling County fire, 16 March 2026 长岭县 · Changling County
The fire started on 16 March 2026 in Changling County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,062 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 151th largest in Jilin Province since 2016 (of 802 with a page). Number 203 in China in 2026, of 913.
The power measured by the satellite is low (13.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 3,062ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 16 Mar 2026 – 23 Mar 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 16 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 77
- in a single hotspot: 14 MW
- Danger at start
- 11
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 101MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 22.8 mm on 3 Apr.
This area had burned before
14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 314 ha in 2024, 183 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 416 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
3,061 ha0.5 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Mar | 8.2 °C | 9 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 16 Mar | 5.9 °C | 10 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 17 Mar | 12.1 °C | 21 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 18 Mar | 0.9 °C | 18 % | 56 km/h | 0.9 mm | Low 7 |
| 19 Mar | 2.4 °C | 21 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 20 Mar | 3.1 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 21 Mar | 12.1 °C | 24 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 22 Mar | 10.8 °C | 24 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 9 |
| 23 Mar | 13.0 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 24 Mar after | 16.7 °C | 15 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 25 Mar after | 15.3 °C | 21 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 26 Mar after | 13.3 °C | 19 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 27 Mar after | 12.2 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 28 Mar after | 15.2 °C | 4 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 29 Mar after | 11.9 °C | 28 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 30 Mar after | 11.3 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 31 Mar after | 14.3 °C | 11 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 1 Apr after | 8.4 °C | 8 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 2 Apr after | 15.1 °C | 7 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 3 Apr after | 3.9 °C | 33 % | 68 km/h | 22.8 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 22 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 113 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 84: 5.6 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 · 77Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,568 haQian Gorlos Mongol Autonomous County15 March 2026 · 1 day · 15 km away
- 2,964 haChangling County 长岭县17 March 2026 · 4 days · 20 km away
- 7,095 haNong'an County 农安县16 November 2025 · 7 days · 22 km away
- 8,861 haNong'an County 农安县14 March 2026 · 7 days · 24 km away
- 6,042 haNong'an County 农安县28 October 2025 · 7 days · 34 km away
- 4,714 haGongzhuling City 公主岭市12 November 2025 · 10 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Changling County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 March 2026 and 23 March 2026: 8 days 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 3,062 hectares (30.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Changling County (3,061 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 16.7 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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. 77 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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.