Hello I am an anthropologist, with little background in atmospheric science. While I believe your logic is correct, I believe you may have missed a tiny but critical component. If you very slowly process through the GIF, you will notice at 03:08 to 03:20 that the "trigger" of the event was not in the Taklamakan (China) desert, but in Dasht-i-Lut (eastern Iran), where much hotter temperatures, plus prevailing winds lofted over northern Pakistan by the Himalayan range (and northerly flows at that location), produce the required rapidly ascending air mass into which the massive heat, from the already elevated desert of China, then joins in a "full conflagration" event. Just a thought.