El Tarf fire, 29 July 2020 الطارف · El Tarf
The fire started on 29 July 2020 in El Tarf, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 334 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 59th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 92 in Algeria in 2020, of 236.
- Burnt area
- 334ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 29 Jul 2020 – 31 Jul 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 29 Jul
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 8
- in a single hotspot: 77 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 285MW
- sum of detected power
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 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 133 ha in 2017.
What happened to each town
-
334 ha reached on 29 Jul3.0 %
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
- Mixed forest73 %
- Other natural land27 %
Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 28 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Jul | 34.7 °C | 25 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 30 Jul | 35.6 °C | 24 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 31 Jul | 36.8 °C | 17 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 1 Aug after | 34.0 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Aug after | 34.4 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Aug after | 31.0 °C | 47 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 4 Aug after | 27.4 °C | 52 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 5 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 43 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Aug after | 27.4 °C | 47 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 7 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 47 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 8 Aug after | 28.3 °C | 50 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 9 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 44 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 10 Aug after | 30.5 °C | 38 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
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 1 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 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 · 8Every 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 El Tarf fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 July 2020 and 31 July 2020: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 334 hectares (3.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered El Tarf (334 ha, 3.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 2.2 km of El Tarf. 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 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (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: 14 · 1021
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
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 ADM3 (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 slightly from each country’s official figure.