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CN · China · –

Tumed Left Banner fire, March 2026 土默特左旗 · Tumed Left Banner, Huimin District

Out · last detection 22 Mar 2026, 05:27 UTC

The fire started on 21 March 2026 in Tumed Left Banner, China, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,105 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 397 in China in 2026, of 1105.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,105ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
21 Mar 2026 – 22 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
21 Mar
2026
Heat detections
40
in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Mar22 Mar
22 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

21 Mar 2026 · 10 MW · 5 22 Mar 2026 · 231 MW · 35
21 Mar 22 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

13°high
41km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 28 Mar.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 616 ha in 2017, 85 ha in 2019, 190 ha in 2020, 7 ha in 2021, 119 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 685 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Tumed Left Banner 土默特左旗 where it started
    1,915 ha reached on 21 Mar
    0.7 %
  2. Huimin District 回民区
    190 ha reached on 22 Mar
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area47 ha
Residents≈ 1,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 47 hectares of built-up land and about 1,400 residents (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)
21 Mar 13.1 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
22 Mar 12.3 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
23 Mar after 15.0 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
24 Mar after 17.3 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
25 Mar after 19.8 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
26 Mar after 18.6 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
27 Mar after 16.6 °C 18 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
28 Mar after 11.2 °C 36 % 30 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Mar 2026
After · 29 Mar 2026

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 25 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10264 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
19 Mar21 Mar23 Mar25 Mar
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)

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 China

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tumed Left Banner fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2026 and 22 March 2026: 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 2,105 hectares (21.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tumed Left Banner (1,915 ha, 0.7 %); Huimin District (190 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 13.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, 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.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • 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 2025, 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 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.