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Çukurca fire, 30 August 2016 Çukurca

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2016, 23:21 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2016 in Çukurca, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 102 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 108th largest in Hakkâri since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 220 in Türkiye in 2016, of 223.

The power measured by the satellite is low (7.2 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
102ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
30 Aug 2016 – 1 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
30 Aug
2016
Heat detections
6
in a single hotspot: 7 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
18MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

31 Aug 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug1 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

3031

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
60km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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

  1. Çukurca 17,216 inhabitants · 20.7 km from the town where it started
    102 ha reached on 30 Aug
    0.1 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland85 %
  • Agricultural areas15 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

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)
30 Aug 37.3 °C 15 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Aug 36.4 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Sept 34.7 °C 15 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Sept after 32.3 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Sept after 32.0 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Sept after 30.7 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Sept after 29.8 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Sept after 30.1 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Sept after 31.1 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Sept after 30.1 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept after 31.7 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Sept after 32.4 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept after 32.6 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2016
After · 8 Sept 2016

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 30 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1072 µg/m³
282930311234
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 · 6Every 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 Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Çukurca fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 August 2016 and 1 September 2016: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 102 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Çukurca (102 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 20.7 km of Çukurca. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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: 112

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 112.

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 ADM2 (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 slightly from each country’s official figure.