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Barkly fire, 27 August 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2023, 03:54 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,874 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1085th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 430 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2024Barkly · 2025Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2023

Burnt area
12,874ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
27 Aug 2023 – 15 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
27 Aug
2023
Heat detections
552
in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start
70
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
160MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug15 Sept
15 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 2023 · 8 MW · 4 28 Aug 2023 · 73 MW · 11 29 Aug 2023 · 41 MW · 14 30 Aug 2023 · 155 MW · 26 31 Aug 2023 · 86 MW · 25 1 Sept 2023 · 105 MW · 21 2 Sept 2023 · 152 MW · 33 3 Sept 2023 · 107 MW · 27 4 Sept 2023 · 1,262 MW · 88 5 Sept 2023 · 120 MW · 21 6 Sept 2023 · 281 MW · 40 7 Sept 2023 · 19 MW · 3 8 Sept 2023 · 117 MW · 41 9 Sept 2023 · 114 MW · 45 10 Sept 2023 · 162 MW · 41 11 Sept 2023 · 242 MW · 62 12 Sept 2023 · 109 MW · 26 13 Sept 2023 · 29 MW · 11 14 Sept 2023 · 19 MW · 11 15 Sept 2023 · 8 MW · 2
27 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
65km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 55 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 8.1% of the area of London (129 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. Barkly where it started
    12,914 ha reached on 27 Aug
    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)
27 Aug 30.4 °C 13 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
28 Aug 30.7 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
29 Aug 31.1 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
30 Aug 32.2 °C 10 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Aug 30.2 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
1 Sept 29.0 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
2 Sept 29.2 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Sept 31.2 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Sept 33.5 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
5 Sept 33.3 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Sept 33.2 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
7 Sept 33.4 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Sept 29.5 °C 17 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
9 Sept 31.2 °C 13 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
10 Sept 31.6 °C 12 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
11 Sept 30.5 °C 11 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
12 Sept 30.3 °C 13 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
13 Sept 30.5 °C 12 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
14 Sept 31.0 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
15 Sept 32.0 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
16 Sept after 32.5 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Sept after 33.0 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Sept after 33.2 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Sept after 33.3 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Sept after 34.6 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Sept after 36.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
22 Sept after 35.0 °C 10 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
23 Sept after 33.5 °C 7 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
24 Sept after 34.9 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
25 Sept after 35.2 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Sept after 35.6 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
27 Sept after 35.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Aug 2023
After · 22 Sept 2023

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 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 81 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak81 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10116 µg/m³
Optical depth1.48
25262728293031123456789101112131415161718
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 · 552Every 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 Barkly fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2023 and 15 September 2023: 20 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 12,874 hectares (128.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (12,914 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 86, class Very extreme.
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 · 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 000.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 552 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 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.