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Xu'der fire, July 2025 Xu'der, Yero'o

Out · last detection 22 Jul 2025, 20:15 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2025 in Xu'der, Mongolia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,434 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 13th largest in Selenge since 2016 (of 17 with a page). Number 8 in Mongolia in 2025, of 13.

Compare with…
Burnt area
3,434ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
16 Jul 2025 – 22 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
16 Jul
2025
Heat detections
405
in a single hotspot: 605 MW
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul22 Jul
22 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 2025 · 12 MW · 5 17 Jul 2025 · 91 MW · 5 18 Jul 2025 · 122 MW · 29 19 Jul 2025 · 439 MW · 61 20 Jul 2025 · 10,926 MW · 250 21 Jul 2025 · 468 MW · 47 22 Jul 2025 · 9 MW · 8
16 Jul 17 Jul 18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 21 Jul 22 Jul

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
42km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 28 Jul.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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. Xu'der where it started
    3,360 ha reached on 16 Jul
    1.3 %
  2. 54 ha reached on 21 Jul
    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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
16 Jul 24.9 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Low 6
17 Jul 29.2 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Jul 25.0 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm Low 10
19 Jul 26.4 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
20 Jul 29.3 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
21 Jul 26.4 °C 45 % 42 km/h 7.4 mm Very low 2
22 Jul 22.5 °C 52 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
23 Jul after 22.1 °C 48 % 34 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 4
24 Jul after 22.4 °C 52 % 30 km/h 13.8 mm Very low 0
25 Jul after 18.5 °C 51 % 31 km/h 7.1 mm Very low 0
26 Jul after 23.5 °C 46 % 26 km/h 0.6 mm Very low 1
27 Jul after 27.9 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
28 Jul after 19.0 °C 49 % 46 km/h 2.2 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2025
After · 29 Jul 2025

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 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 273 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 143: 9.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak273 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10277 µg/m³
Optical depth1.49
1415161718192021222324
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 · 405Every 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 Mongolia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Xu'der fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 July 2025 to 22 July 2025 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 July 2025 to 21 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,434 hectares (34.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Xu'der (3,360 ha, 1.3 %); Yero'o (54 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.3 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 42 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 Mongolia (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: 105 · 101 · 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 105 · 101.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 July 2025 to 21 July 2025. 405 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.