Skip to content
worldfires
en
CN · China · →

Xingqing District fire, September 2022 兴庆区 · Xingqing District, Otog Front Banner

Out · last measured on 22 Sept 2022

The fire started on 22 September 2022 in Xingqing District, China, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,660 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 71 in China in 2022, of 211.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Xingqing District · 2023Xingqing District · 2026

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
1,660ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
22 Sept 2022 – 22 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
22 Sept
2022
Danger at start
15
Moderate · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

20°high
28km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 2 Oct.

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,051 ha in 2018, 491 ha in 2019, 867 ha in 2020, 514 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,217 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (17 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. Xingqing District 兴庆区 where it started
    1,179 ha
    1.9 %
  2. Otog Front Banner 鄂托克前旗
    487 ha
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area1.6 ha
Residents≈ 90

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.6 hectares of built-up land and about 90 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)
22 Sept 19.6 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
23 Sept after 18.9 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
24 Sept after 23.3 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
25 Sept after 24.0 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
26 Sept after 25.5 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
27 Sept after 24.8 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
28 Sept after 27.3 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 Sept after 26.8 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Sept after 26.7 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Oct after 26.5 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
2 Oct after 22.9 °C 34 % 43 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Sept 2022
After · 29 Sept 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 25 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak42 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10183 µg/m³
Optical depth0.46
202122232425
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 China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Xingqing District fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 September 2022 and 22 September 2022: 1 day 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 1,660 hectares (16.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Xingqing District (1,179 ha, 1.9 %); Otog Front Banner (487 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 19.6 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, 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.

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 119.

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.

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.