Taounate fire, August 2023 إقليم تاونات · Taounate
The fire started on 23 August 2023 in Taounate, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 114 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 17th largest in Fez-Meknes since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 12 in Morocco in 2023, of 13.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 114ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 23 Aug 2023 – 24 Aug 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- provinces
- Started on
- 23 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 8
- in a single hotspot: 72 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 69MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 3 Sept.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
114 ha reached on 23 Aug0.0 %
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
- Broadleaved forest100 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Aug | 35.8 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 39 |
| 24 Aug | 35.4 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 25 Aug after | 35.7 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 26 Aug after | 33.1 °C | 27 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 27 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 28 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Aug after | 29.2 °C | 23 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 29 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 30 Aug after | 26.8 °C | 41 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 31 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 29 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Sept after | 28.6 °C | 37 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Sept after | 21.5 °C | 53 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 21 |
| 3 Sept after | 21.5 °C | 51 % | 35 km/h | 2.2 mm | Low 7 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 24 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 8Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 229 haTaounate إقليم تاوناتAugust 2016 · 1 day · 11 km away
- 199 haAl Hoceima إقليم الحسيمة18 August 2022 · 5 days · 22 km away
- 546 haChefchaouen إقليم شفشاونApril 2023 · 6 days · 26 km away
- 552 haChefchaouen إقليم شفشاونAugust 2020 · 4 days · 28 km away
- 439 haAl Hoceima إقليم الحسيمة18 August 2022 · 7 days · 29 km away
- 920 haChefchaouen إقليم شفشاونAugust 2022 · 4 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Taounate fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 23 August 2023 and 24 August 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 114 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Taounate (114 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.
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: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 8 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.