How long did the Changling County fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 March 2026 and 20 March 2026: 5 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 1,051 hectares (10.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Changling County (972 ha, 0.2 %); Nong'an County (77 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 11.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, 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.

CN · China · 2026-03-16 → 2026-03-20

Changling County fire, 16 March 2026 长岭县 · Changling County, Nong'an County

Out · last detection 20 Mar 2026, 04:24 UTC

The fire started on 16 March 2026 in Changling County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,051 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 750th largest in Jilin Province since 2016 (of 802 with a page). Number 827 in China in 2026, of 890.

The power measured by the satellite is low (8.4 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…

Suggestions: Nong'an County · 2025 Changling County · 2026 Changling County · 2026 Gongzhuling City · 2025

Burnt area: 1,051ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 16 Mar 2026 – 20 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 16 Mar; 2026
Heat detections: 29; in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start: 10; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 37MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Mar20 Mar

Play back 20 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

16 Mar 19 Mar 20 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

12°high

56km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 118 ha in 2021, 231 ha in 2022, 151 ha in 2024, 363 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 539 ha that had burned before.

111 ha Nong'an County fire, November 2025 7,095 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Changling County 长岭县 where it started

972 ha

0.2 %
Nong'an County 农安县

77 ha

0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area22 ha

Residents≈ 1,700

Inside the perimeter there were about 22 hectares of built-up land and about 1,700 residents (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)
16 Mar	5.6 °C	10 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
17 Mar	11.9 °C	21 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
18 Mar	0.7 °C	18 %	56 km/h	0.9 mm	Low 7
19 Mar	2.1 °C	21 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
20 Mar	2.9 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
21 Mar after	11.8 °C	24 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
22 Mar after	10.6 °C	24 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 8
23 Mar after	12.7 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
24 Mar after	16.4 °C	14 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
25 Mar after	15.1 °C	21 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
26 Mar after	13.0 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
27 Mar after	12.0 °C	16 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
28 Mar after	15.0 °C	4 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
29 Mar after	11.7 °C	28 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
30 Mar after	11.1 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Mar 2026

After · 27 Mar 2026

Before After

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 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).

PM2.5 peak113 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM10130 µg/m³

Optical depth1.44

WHO 15

14151617181920212223

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 · 29Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Changling County fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 March 2026 and 20 March 2026: 5 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 1,051 hectares (10.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Changling County (972 ha, 0.2 %); Nong'an County (77 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 11.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 119.

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. 29 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned