Dorbod-Mongol Autonomous County fire, October 2022 杜尔伯特蒙古族自治县 · Dorbod-Mongol Autonomous County
The fire started on 24 October 2022 in Dorbod-Mongol Autonomous County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,711 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 794th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1846 with a page). Number 66 in China in 2022, of 211.
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 1,711ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 24 Oct 2022 – 29 Oct 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 24 Oct
- 2022
- Danger at start
- 14
- Moderate · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 31 Oct.
This area had burned before
20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 196 ha in 2018, 169 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 336 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
-
1,712 ha0.3 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Oct | 10.2 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 25 Oct | 14.9 °C | 46 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 26 Oct | 7.2 °C | 60 % | 56 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 27 Oct | 6.6 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 28 Oct | 7.7 °C | 36 % | 15 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 29 Oct | 9.5 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 30 Oct after | 10.0 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.8 mm | Low 9 |
| 31 Oct after | 11.0 °C | 34 % | 52 km/h | 1.8 mm | Low 8 |
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 30 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 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)
Other fires nearby
- 7,524 haDorbod-Mongol Autonomous County 杜尔伯特蒙古族自治县14 February 2024 · 4 days · 4 km away
- 13,434 haDorbod-Mongol Autonomous County 杜尔伯特蒙古族自治县October 2025 · 12 days · 5 km away
- 3,407 haTailai County 泰来县15 March 2026 · 13 days · 16 km away
- 3,794 haDorbod-Mongol Autonomous County 杜尔伯特蒙古族自治县2 November 2025 · 6 days · 23 km away
- 3,575 haTailai County 泰来县15 March 2026 · 14 days · 36 km away
- 4,766 haZhenlai County 镇赉县13 March 2021 · 6 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Dorbod-Mongol Autonomous County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 October 2022 and 29 October 2022: 6 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 1,711 hectares (17.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Dorbod-Mongol Autonomous County (1,712 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 14.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, 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
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.
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. No 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.