Marmaris fire, July 2021 Marmaris
The fire started on 29 July 2021 in Marmaris, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 11,548 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 3th largest in Muğla since 2016 (of 43 with a page). Number 5 in Türkiye in 2021, of 138.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 11,548ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 8days
- 29 Jul 2021 – 5 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 29 Jul
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 834
- in a single hotspot: 473 MW
- Danger at start
- 64
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.9GW
- detected power per day, on average
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 more than two months 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?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
11,567 ha reached on 29 Jul13 %
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
- Coniferous forest67 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland16 %
- Agricultural areas7.3 %
- Mixed forest4.6 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub3.0 %
- Other natural land1.4 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Muğla orman yangınları 2021 · Marmaris Armutalan yangını · Marmaris fire 2021
- Official area reported: 13,650 ha (the satellite measured 11,548 ha)
Sources
- 29 Temmuz 2021 Marmaris Yangını: 4 Yıl Sonra Geride Ne Kaldı? — Gündem Gazetesi, 28 July 2025
- Marmaris yangınının üzerinden bir yıl geçti — Anadolu Ajansi, 29 July 2022
- Marmaris'teki orman yangını: Zarar gören 13 bin 650 hektar alandan 500'ü temizlendi — NTV, 7 October 2021
- Marmaris yangını kontrol altına alındı — Anka Haber, 5 August 2021
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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 | 39.6 °C | 12 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 30 Jul | 39.1 °C | 11 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 31 Jul | 39.0 °C | 11 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 1 Aug | 40.3 °C | 9 % | 74 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 2 Aug | 41.7 °C | 7 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 86 |
| 3 Aug | 43.2 °C | 6 % | 67 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 76 |
| 4 Aug | 42.1 °C | 11 % | 79 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 5 Aug | 40.2 °C | 13 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 6 Aug after | 39.0 °C | 13 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 76 |
| 7 Aug after | 33.8 °C | 26 % | 87 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 8 Aug after | 34.8 °C | 20 % | 73 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 9 Aug after | 36.3 °C | 17 % | 72 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 10 Aug after | 38.2 °C | 10 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 11 Aug after | 36.6 °C | 14 % | 75 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 12 Aug after | 36.2 °C | 11 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 70 |
| 13 Aug after | 35.1 °C | 16 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 14 Aug after | 34.4 °C | 15 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 15 Aug after | 33.5 °C | 17 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
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 July 2021 the air beside the fire reached 94 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 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 · 834Every 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 Marmaris fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 July 2021 and 5 August 2021: 8 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 11,548 hectares (115.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Marmaris (11,567 ha, 13 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Marmaris and came within 3.5 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 43.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 79 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 86, class Very extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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 · 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: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 834 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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 ADM2 (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 slightly from each country’s official figure.