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Aurukun fire, August 2022 Aurukun, Cook

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2022, 15:16 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2022 in Aurukun, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 79,582 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 52th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 5 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
79,582ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
33days
21 Aug 2022 – 22 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
21 Aug
2022
Heat detections
2,856
in a single hotspot: 130 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
20.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

22 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug22 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

2122232425262728293112345678910111213141516171819202122

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
54km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 46 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 34,790 ha in 2016, 31,471 ha in 2017, 5,060 ha in 2018, 15,250 ha in 2019, 12,141 ha in 2020, 6,096 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 66,188 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Aurukun where it started
    46,641 ha reached on 20 Aug
    6.2 %
  2. Cook
    33,392 ha reached on 21 Aug
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
20 Aug 32.6 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Aug 32.1 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Aug 30.1 °C 44 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Aug 34.6 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Aug 33.5 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Aug 33.0 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Aug 31.4 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.6 mm High 32
27 Aug 33.1 °C 41 % 48 km/h 2.0 mm High 23
28 Aug 34.2 °C 41 % 53 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
29 Aug 32.8 °C 49 % 53 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
30 Aug 32.2 °C 50 % 49 km/h 0.6 mm High 29
31 Aug 31.7 °C 48 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Sept 34.7 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Sept 34.1 °C 46 % 30 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 14
3 Sept 33.9 °C 42 % 32 km/h 3.6 mm Low 10
4 Sept 32.5 °C 47 % 30 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 13
5 Sept 33.0 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Sept 34.0 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept 35.1 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Sept 35.4 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept 35.4 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Sept 35.8 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Sept 36.0 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
12 Sept 36.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Sept 36.0 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Sept 34.6 °C 37 % 48 km/h 1.1 mm High 33
15 Sept 36.4 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept 36.7 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Sept 38.0 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept 37.2 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
19 Sept 36.9 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Sept 37.8 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Sept 37.1 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Sept 37.7 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Sept after 35.1 °C 34 % 41 km/h 4.9 mm Moderate 13
24 Sept after 36.6 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
25 Sept after 37.3 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Sept after 37.3 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Sept after 37.7 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Sept after 37.2 °C 30 % 32 km/h 6.7 mm Moderate 13
29 Sept after 35.7 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Sept after 35.6 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
1 Oct after 35.6 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
2 Oct after 35.8 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Oct after 36.5 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Oct after 36.1 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Oct after 36.8 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Oct after 37.2 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Oct after 36.8 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Oct after 37.0 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 39
9 Oct after 37.1 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Aug 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 9 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 220 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 72: 4.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak220 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10315 µg/m³
Optical depth1.08
1920212223242526272829303112345678910111213141516171819202122232425
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 · 2,856Every 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 Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aurukun fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 August 2022 and 22 September 2022: 33 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 79,582 hectares (795.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aurukun (46,641 ha, 6.2 %); Cook (33,392 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (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: 000

Satellite cross-check

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.

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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 000.

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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.