Barkly fire, 28 August 2023 Barkly
The fire started on 28 August 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 51,928 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 168th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 88 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2026Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2017
- Burnt area
- 51,928ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 28 Aug 2023 – 13 Sept 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 28 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 2,286
- in a single hotspot: 278 MW
- Danger at start
- 60
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.8GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 690 ha in 2017, 167 ha in 2018.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Barkly where it started52,211 ha reached on 28 Aug0.2 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Aug | 31.4 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 29 Aug | 31.5 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 30 Aug | 32.7 °C | 7 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 31 Aug | 30.1 °C | 15 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 1 Sept | 29.2 °C | 17 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 2 Sept | 28.8 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 3 Sept | 30.6 °C | 12 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 4 Sept | 33.5 °C | 16 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 5 Sept | 34.3 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 6 Sept | 33.3 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 7 Sept | 35.3 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Sept | 30.1 °C | 14 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 90 |
| 9 Sept | 32.1 °C | 10 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 10 Sept | 32.5 °C | 9 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 76 |
| 11 Sept | 31.3 °C | 8 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 12 Sept | 31.4 °C | 12 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 13 Sept | 31.4 °C | 14 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 14 Sept after | 31.9 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 15 Sept after | 32.5 °C | 10 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 16 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 10 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 17 Sept after | 34.2 °C | 10 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 18 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 10 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 20 Sept after | 36.0 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 21 Sept after | 37.3 °C | 8 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 22 Sept after | 35.7 °C | 10 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 89 |
| 23 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 9 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 3 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 159 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 84: 5.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 2,286Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,510 haBarkly27 October 2023 · 3 days · 14 km away
- 145,818 haBarkly8 August 2026 · 13 days · 17 km away
- 22,349 haBarkly27 October 2023 · 3 days · 18 km away
- 47,427 haBarkly2 December 2017 · 7 days · 30 km away
- 67,823 haBarkly31 August 2023 · 11 days · 38 km away
- 30,448 haBarkly25 October 2023 · 5 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Barkly fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 August 2023 and 13 September 2023: 17 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 51,928 hectares (519.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Barkly (52,211 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 90, 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.
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
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. 2,286 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.
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.