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Taounate fire, August 2022 إقليم تاونات · Taounate

Out · last measured on 22 Aug 2022

The fire started on 21 August 2022 in Taounate, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 150 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Fez-Meknes since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 18 in Morocco in 2022, of 22.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Taounate · 2016Al Hoceima · 2022Al Hoceima · 2022Taounate · 2023

We have the Copernicus 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
150ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
21 Aug 2022 – 22 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
provinces
Started on
21 Aug
2022
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

37°high
34km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 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. Taounate إقليم تاونات 122,256 inhabitants where it started
    151 ha
    0.0 %

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

  • Mixed forest72 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland14 %
  • Agricultural areas14 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
21 Aug 37.4 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Aug 35.9 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Aug after 35.8 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Aug after 32.6 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Aug after 33.9 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Aug after 33.9 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Aug after 31.5 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Aug after 34.5 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Aug after 35.5 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Aug after 31.2 °C 49 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Aug after 35.3 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Sept after 35.1 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Aug 2022
After · 29 Aug 2022

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 22 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1042 µg/m³
Optical depth0.96
19202122232425
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 Morocco ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Taounate fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 21 August 2022 and 22 August 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 150 hectares (1.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Taounate (151 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Morocco (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: 15 · 150 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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 15 · 150.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.