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MN · Mongolia ·

Erdenecagaan fire, 9 March 2025 Erdenecagaan

Out · last detection 9 Mar 2025, 19:05 UTC

The fire started on 9 March 2025 in Erdenecagaan, Mongolia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,017 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Sükhbaatar since 2016 (of 15 with a page). Number 11 in Mongolia in 2025, of 11.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.6 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: East Ujimqin Banner · 2016East Ujimqin Banner · 2016Erdenecagaan · 2025Erdenecagaan · 2016

Burnt area
2,017ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
9 Mar 2025 – 9 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
9 Mar
2025
Heat detections
58
in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
305MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Mar9 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

9 Mar 2025 · 305 MW · 58

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

The weather it burned in

13°high
72km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days 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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (20 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

  1. Erdenecagaan where it started
    2,026 ha reached on 9 Mar
    0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)

Started with Strong wind: 56 % of the area in Mongolia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
9 Mar 12.9 °C 22 % 72 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
10 Mar after 7.9 °C 15 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
11 Mar after 5.9 °C 25 % 82 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 13
12 Mar after 0.4 °C 31 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
13 Mar after 0.4 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
14 Mar after -1.8 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
15 Mar after -3.3 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
16 Mar after -1.0 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
17 Mar after -2.7 °C 26 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
18 Mar after 7.3 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
19 Mar after 11.8 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 16.0, a minimum humidity of 22% and 42 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 9.

FWI at the start 16.0
Minimum humidity 22 %
Days without rain 42
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

East Ujimqin Banner fire, March 2016
3,262 ha 1 day FWI 14.0 Min. humidity 24 % 96 km away, in 2016

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 1 Apr.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 9. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
72km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 9 Mar, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Mar 2025
After · 16 Mar 2025

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 10 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 94 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak94 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10463 µg/m³
Optical depth0.86
7 Mar9 Mar11 Mar
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 · 58Every 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 Mongolia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Erdenecagaan fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 March 2025 and 9 March 2025: 1 day 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 2,017 hectares (20.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Erdenecagaan (2,026 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 12.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mongolia (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: 105 · 101 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 105 · 101.

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. 58 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.