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Lesbos fire, July 2022 Μυτιλήνης · Lesbos

Out · last detection 26 Jul 2022, 01:14 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2022 in Lesbos, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,607 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 3 in Greece in 2022, of 29.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lesbos · 2022Lesbos · 2019Lesbos · 2020Lesbos · 2019

Burnt area
2,607ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
23 Jul 2022 – 27 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
23 Jul
2022
Heat detections
159
in a single hotspot: 206 MW
Danger at start
72
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
947MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul27 Jul
26 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jul 2022 · 3,014 MW · 76 24 Jul 2022 · 705 MW · 69 25 Jul 2022 · 48 MW · 9 26 Jul 2022 · 22 MW · 5
23 Jul 24 Jul 25 Jul 26 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

36°high
62km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 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 1.6% of the area of London (26 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. Lesbos Μυτιλήνης where it started
    2,606 ha reached on 23 Jul
    1.6 %

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

  • Agricultural areas48 %
  • Coniferous forest30 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
  • Other natural land6.0 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.7 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 0 %

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 34.3 °C 21 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
24 Jul 35.7 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Jul 35.0 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
26 Jul 33.5 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
27 Jul 35.0 °C 15 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
28 Jul after 35.5 °C 21 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Jul after 34.8 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Jul after 34.1 °C 26 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Jul after 33.8 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Aug after 32.9 °C 30 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Aug after 32.4 °C 24 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
3 Aug after 31.6 °C 30 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
4 Aug after 31.2 °C 37 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Aug after 31.8 °C 36 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Aug after 31.9 °C 34 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jul 2022
After · 3 Aug 2022

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 25 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1031 µg/m³
21222324252627282930
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 · 159Every 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 Lesbos fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 23 July 2022 and 27 July 2022: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,607 hectares (26.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lesbos (2,606 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, class Very 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. 159 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.