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Barkly fire, 31 August 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2023, 16:46 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 67,823 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 113th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 62 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2017Barkly · 2023

Burnt area
67,823ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
31 Aug 2023 – 15 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
31 Aug
2023
Heat detections
4,064
in a single hotspot: 490 MW
Danger at start
64
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
3.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug15 Sept
15 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2023 · 8 MW · 4 1 Sept 2023 · 341 MW · 97 2 Sept 2023 · 10,063 MW · 533 3 Sept 2023 · 22,903 MW · 1123 4 Sept 2023 · 10,533 MW · 854 5 Sept 2023 · 10,017 MW · 756 6 Sept 2023 · 2,737 MW · 270 7 Sept 2023 · 899 MW · 120 8 Sept 2023 · 225 MW · 44 9 Sept 2023 · 313 MW · 64 10 Sept 2023 · 293 MW · 47 11 Sept 2023 · 210 MW · 40 12 Sept 2023 · 126 MW · 22 13 Sept 2023 · 198 MW · 16 14 Sept 2023 · 445 MW · 26 15 Sept 2023 · 1,224 MW · 48
31 Aug 3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 15 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
66km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,159 ha in 2016, 8,619 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 43% of the area of London (678 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
    68,324 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.2 %

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.

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)
31 Aug 28.9 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
1 Sept 28.0 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Sept 28.5 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Sept 30.5 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 33.5 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Sept 32.9 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Sept 32.9 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Sept 34.1 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Sept 27.0 °C 17 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
9 Sept 30.4 °C 12 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
10 Sept 30.5 °C 11 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
11 Sept 29.6 °C 9 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
12 Sept 30.3 °C 10 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
13 Sept 30.5 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
14 Sept 31.4 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Sept 32.3 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
16 Sept after 33.2 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Sept after 33.9 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Sept after 32.8 °C 11 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Sept after 33.7 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
20 Sept after 35.4 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Sept after 36.6 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
22 Sept after 34.3 °C 11 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
23 Sept after 33.5 °C 9 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
24 Sept after 35.0 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
25 Sept after 35.1 °C 12 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 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 3 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 226 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 121: 8.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak226 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10323 µg/m³
Optical depth3.06
29303112345678910111213
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 · 4,064Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2023 to 15 September 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2023 to 10 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 67,823 hectares (678.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (68,324 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 September 2023 → 15 September 2023.

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
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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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 August 2023 to 10 September 2023. 4,064 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.