Earth from Space: Scorched Rhodes

This summer, Europe experienced a relentless heatwave, fuelling wildfires in several countries. This Copernicus Sentinel-1 image shows the burn scars left by fires on the Greek island of Rhodes.

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Between 18 and 28 July 2023, wildfires broke out on Rhodes. Fierce blazes ravaged almost 18,000 hectares of land, destroyed buildings, trapped animals and led to a mass evacuation of thousands of tourists.

This image uses two Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar images, one from 12 July and one from 24 July, to show how the land changed between the two acquisitions.

Shades of grey indicate areas where little or no change occurred. Shades of red, mainly spreading from the mountainous region in the centre of the island to the southern coast, depict the extent of the burned area – this covers roughly 13,000 hectares.

The lake of Gadoura, visible in black in the centre of the island, was surrounded by the fires, as evident from red areas.

The capital town of Rhodes can be seen as a white area in the northeastern most tip of the island, while the outline of Rhodes International Airport stands out in black on the coast southwest of the town. The runways in black south of the airport are part of Rhodes Maritsa Airport.

With global temperatures rising and a surge of extreme weather events, disasters such as wildfires have notably increased around the world. Earth observing satellites like the Copernicus Sentinel missions offer an eye in the sky to carefully monitor and map these crisis situations at both regional and global scales, and provide valuable information for emergency response. 

ESA recently reopened its World Fire Atlas, which, using Copernicus Sentinel-3 data, offers an insight into the distribution of individual fires across Earth’s surface.