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Uludere fire, September 2016 Uludere

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2016, 09:58 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2016 in Uludere, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 416 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 51th largest in Şırnak since 2016 (of 192 with a page). Number 81 in Türkiye in 2016, of 223.

Burnt area
416ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
13 Sept 2016 – 13 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
13 Sept
2016
Heat detections
27
in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
204MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Sept 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept13 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

1314

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
44km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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. Uludere 46,040 inhabitants · 11.3 km from the town where it started
    416 ha reached on 12 Sept
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

  • Scrub and transitional woodland89 %
  • Broadleaved forest9.2 %
  • Other natural land1.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

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)
13 Sept 28.9 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept after 25.7 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Sept after 24.1 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
16 Sept after 25.6 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
17 Sept after 23.3 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
18 Sept after 25.0 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Sept after 25.5 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Sept after 26.5 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Sept after 25.1 °C 20 % 65 km/h 0.9 mm High 32
22 Sept after 23.5 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Sept after 23.0 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Sept 2016
After · 20 Sept 2016

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 14 September 2016 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1032 µg/m³
101112131415161718
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 · 27Every 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 Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Uludere fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 13 September 2016 and 13 September 2016: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 416 hectares (4.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Uludere (416 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 11.3 km of Uludere. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.9 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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: 112

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 112.

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.