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Shiping County fire, January 2023 Shiping County

Out · last measured on 2 Feb 2023

The fire started on 29 January 2023 in Shiping County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,546 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 138th largest in Yunnan Province since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 122 in China in 2023, of 280.

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,546ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
29 Jan 2023 – 2 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
29 Jan
2023
Danger at start
5
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

24°high
36km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.7 mm on 3 Feb.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 337 ha in 2016, 170 ha in 2019, 289 ha in 2020, 215 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 869 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Shiping County where it started
    1,550 ha
    0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

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 Jan 12.3 °C 47 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
30 Jan 18.0 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
31 Jan 22.0 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
1 Feb 23.7 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
2 Feb 22.6 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
3 Feb after 12.7 °C 72 % 46 km/h 5.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jan 2023
After · 9 Feb 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 29 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 63: 4.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak90 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10130 µg/m³
Optical depth0.96
272829303112345
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Shiping County fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 January 2023 and 2 February 2023: 5 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 1,546 hectares (15.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Shiping County (1,550 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119

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.

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 119.

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 ADM3 (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 from each country’s official figure.