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KZ · Kazakhstan · –

Zharminskiy fire, 8 October 2022 Жарма ауданы · Zharminskiy, Ulanskiy

Out · last detection 9 Oct 2022, 19:43 UTC

The fire started on 8 October 2022 in Zharminskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,710 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 61th largest in East Kazakhstan Region since 2016 (of 81 with a page). Number 27 in Kazakhstan in 2022, of 42.

Burnt area
3,710ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
8 Oct 2022 – 9 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
8 Oct
2022
Heat detections
159
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Oct9 Oct
9 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

8 Oct 2022 · 1,998 MW · 105 9 Oct 2022 · 633 MW · 54
8 Oct 9 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

22°high
64km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,185 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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. Zharminskiy Жарма ауданы where it started
    3,093 ha reached on 8 Oct
    0.1 %
  2. Ulanskiy Ұлан ауданы
    648 ha reached on 8 Oct
    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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)

Started with Strong wind: 19 % of the area in Kazakhstan

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
8 Oct 22.1 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Oct 20.7 °C 15 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Oct after 9.4 °C 54 % 32 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 12
11 Oct after 13.4 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
12 Oct after 17.1 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
13 Oct after 16.9 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
14 Oct after 18.7 °C 22 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
15 Oct after 21.1 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Oct after 21.4 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Oct after 15.8 °C 22 % 43 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 20

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 45.1, a minimum humidity of 17% and 9 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 10.

FWI at the start 45.1
Minimum humidity 17 %
Days without rain 9
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Semipalatinskiy fire, June 2023
50,232 ha 8 days FWI 46.5 Min. humidity 17 % 101 km away, in 2023

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.0 mm on 20 Jun.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 10. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

1.4 mmfirst rain
17 Oct8 days after it ended
64km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 9 Oct, and on 17 Oct 1.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Oct 2022
After · 16 Oct 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 11 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 40 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak40 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1057 µg/m³
Optical depth0.56
6 Oct8 Oct10 Oct12 Oct
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 · 159Every 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 Kazakhstan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Zharminskiy fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 October 2022 and 9 October 2022: 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 3,710 hectares (37.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Zharminskiy (3,093 ha, 0.1 %); Ulanskiy (648 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Kazakhstan (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 · 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 112.

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. 159 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 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 from each country’s official figure.