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IQ · Iraq · –

Sharbazher fire, September 2020 Sharbazher, Panjwin

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2020, 23:09 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2020 in Sharbazher, Iraq, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,314 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Al-Sulaimaniyah since 2016 (of 23 with a page). Number 17 in Iraq in 2020, of 35.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sharbazher · 2020Panjwin · 2023Marivan · 2023Sharbazher · 2021

Burnt area
1,314ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
14 Sept 2020 – 17 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
14 Sept
2020
Heat detections
40
in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
43MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept17 Sept
17 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2020 · 36 MW · 13 15 Sept 2020 · 129 MW · 22 16 Sept 2020 · 4 MW · 4 17 Sept 2020 · 2 MW · 1
14 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
32km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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. Sharbazher where it started
    1,137 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.5 %
  2. Panjwin
    179 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.2 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.44 ha
Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.44 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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 Very dry air: 69 % of the area in Iraq 60 days without rain: 27 % of the area in Iraq

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
14 Sept 33.9 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Sept 33.7 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 33.8 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept 34.1 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Sept after 33.4 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept after 30.6 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Sept after 31.7 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept after 33.2 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept after 33.3 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Sept after 32.1 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Sept after 30.2 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Sept after 29.8 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Sept after 30.3 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Sept after 30.5 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 49.0, a minimum humidity of 14% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 25.

FWI at the start 49.0
Minimum humidity 14 %
Days without rain 60+
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Sharbazher fire, August 2020
1,190 ha 4 days FWI 47.5 Min. humidity 15 % 7 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

4 days
median duration
1,357 ha
median area
88 %
went past 1,000 ha
—
rain at the end (median; 0 of 25 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (1,314 ha against a median of 1,357 ha) and lasted 4 days, against 4 days.

In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.

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
32km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 17 Sept, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. None of its 25 twins had rain when they ended.

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 · 7 Sept 2020
After · 24 Sept 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 40Every 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 Iraq

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sharbazher fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 September 2020 and 17 September 2020: 4 days 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 1,314 hectares (13.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sharbazher (1,137 ha, 0.5 %); Panjwin (179 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Iraq (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 25. Their median duration was 4 days and their median area 1,357 ha; 88 % went past 1,000 ha. In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.

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.

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.

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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. 40 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 2020, 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.