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Karystos fire, July 2023 Κάρυστος · Karystos

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2023, 12:13 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2023 in Karystos, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,063 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Central Greece since 2016 (of 53 with a page). Number 11 in Greece in 2023, of 34.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Karystos · 2016Karystos · 2023Karystos · 2026Andros · 2023

Burnt area
2,063ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
23 Jul 2023 – 25 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
23 Jul
2023
Heat detections
124
in a single hotspot: 141 MW
Danger at start
68
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
863MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul25 Jul
25 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jul 2023 · 1,103 MW · 39 24 Jul 2023 · 1,350 MW · 73 25 Jul 2023 · 137 MW · 12
23 Jul 24 Jul 25 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
55km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 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 (21 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. Karystos Κάρυστος 7,483 inhabitants where it started
    2,063 ha reached on 23 Jul
    3.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

  • Sclerophyllous scrub53 %
  • Agricultural areas25 %
  • Other natural land15 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland5.1 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.9 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

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)
23 Jul 41.6 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
24 Jul 36.4 °C 24 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Jul 38.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
26 Jul after 45.8 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
27 Jul after 32.8 °C 27 % 93 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Jul after 30.7 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Jul after 31.3 °C 36 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jul after 31.7 °C 35 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Jul after 32.1 °C 37 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Aug after 31.1 °C 41 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Aug after 36.5 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Aug after 37.5 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Aug after 38.2 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jul 2023
After · 1 Aug 2023

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 24 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 66 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak66 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1073 µg/m³
Optical depth0.58
2122232425262728
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 · 124Every 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 Greece ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Karystos fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 23 July 2023 and 25 July 2023: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,063 hectares (20.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Karystos (2,063 ha, 3.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Greece (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 · 199 · 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

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 · 199.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 124 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.