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Popasna fire, August 2023 Попаснянський район · Popasna

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2023, 22:54 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2023 in Popasna, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 105 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 865th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 464 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

The power measured by the satellite is low (8.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
105ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
31 Aug 2023 – 31 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Aug
2023
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 9 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
9MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug31 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

31

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
31km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Popasna Попаснянський район 40,204 inhabitants · 6.9 km from the town where it started
    105 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.1 %

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

  • Other natural land61 %
  • Agricultural areas22 %
  • Mixed forest17 %

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)
31 Aug 30.0 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Sept after 30.1 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
2 Sept after 24.8 °C 58 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
3 Sept after 26.5 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
4 Sept after 26.6 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
5 Sept after 22.5 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 21
6 Sept after 26.2 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
7 Sept after 22.9 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
8 Sept after 20.0 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Sept after 14.9 °C 45 % 48 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
10 Sept after 19.4 °C 47 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2023
After · 7 Sept 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 2 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
Optical depth1.19
293031123
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 · 2Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Popasna fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 31 August 2023 and 31 August 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 105 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Popasna (105 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 6.9 km of Popasna. 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 30.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 112

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.

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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 101 · 112.

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 (Public Domain). 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.