Taobei District fire, 24 March 2021 洮北区 · Taobei District
The fire started on 24 March 2021 in Taobei District, China, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,776 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 170th largest in Jilin Province since 2016 (of 815 with a page). Number 45 in China in 2021, of 242.
Compare with…
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
- 2,776ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 24 Mar 2021 – 25 Mar 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 24 Mar
- 2021
- Danger at start
- 8
- Low · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 273 ha in 2016, 1,280 ha in 2017, 544 ha in 2018, 412 ha in 2019, 996 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,818 ha that had burned before.
- 641 ha Taobei District fire, October 2017 1,368 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 83 ha Taobei District fire, March 2018 1,193 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 31 ha Taobei District fire, March 2020 1,254 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
2,769 ha1.4 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 600 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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Mar | 13.2 °C | 23 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 25 Mar | 13.2 °C | 32 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 26 Mar after | 11.0 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 27 Mar after | 17.1 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 28 Mar after | 12.5 °C | 37 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 29 Mar after | 11.3 °C | 38 % | 55 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 30 Mar after | 13.1 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 31 Mar after | 14.8 °C | 28 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 1 Apr after | 15.8 °C | 26 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 2 Apr after | 16.7 °C | 25 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 3 Apr after | 10.6 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 4 Apr after | 15.2 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
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.
Other fires nearby
- 3,498 haTaobei District 洮北区17 March 2026 · 9 days · 9 km away
- 3,892 haTaobei District 洮北区6 March 2017 · 8 days · 14 km away
- 10,871 haTaobei District 洮北区15 March 2026 · 11 days · 18 km away
- 4,644 haZhenlai County 镇赉县16 March 2026 · 16 days · 18 km away
- 5,873 haTaobei District 洮北区16 March 2026 · 15 days · 22 km away
- 14,878 haZhenlai County 镇赉县16 November 2025 · 8 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Taobei District fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 March 2021 and 25 March 2021: 2 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 2,776 hectares (27.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Taobei District (2,769 ha, 1.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 13.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 45 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 · 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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
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.