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Barkly fire, 9 September 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2023, 04:13 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 31,802 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 339th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3511 with a page). Number 163 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2026Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2024Barkly · 2023

Burnt area
31,802ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
9 Sept 2023 – 1 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Sept
2023
Heat detections
1,357
in a single hotspot: 331 MW
Danger at start
72
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
901MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept1 Oct
30 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2023 · 3 MW · 3 10 Sept 2023 · 142 MW · 20 11 Sept 2023 · 447 MW · 54 12 Sept 2023 · 7,744 MW · 260 13 Sept 2023 · 707 MW · 85 14 Sept 2023 · 595 MW · 58 15 Sept 2023 · 569 MW · 82 16 Sept 2023 · 139 MW · 32 17 Sept 2023 · 2,088 MW · 85 18 Sept 2023 · 789 MW · 104 19 Sept 2023 · 1,419 MW · 102 20 Sept 2023 · 379 MW · 47 21 Sept 2023 · 996 MW · 105 22 Sept 2023 · 786 MW · 96 23 Sept 2023 · 1,229 MW · 45 24 Sept 2023 · 20 MW · 10 25 Sept 2023 · 189 MW · 23 26 Sept 2023 · 281 MW · 38 27 Sept 2023 · 519 MW · 43 28 Sept 2023 · 70 MW · 23 29 Sept 2023 · 250 MW · 30 30 Sept 2023 · 459 MW · 12
9 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 21 Sept 25 Sept 29 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

37°high
61km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 692 ha in 2017, 941 ha in 2021, 1,684 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 20% of the area of London (318 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
    31,955 ha reached on 9 Sept
    0.1 %

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)
9 Sept 31.4 °C 13 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
10 Sept 32.1 °C 11 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
11 Sept 31.0 °C 11 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
12 Sept 30.6 °C 13 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
13 Sept 30.8 °C 11 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
14 Sept 31.4 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
15 Sept 32.4 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
16 Sept 33.1 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Sept 33.5 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Sept 33.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Sept 33.9 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Sept 35.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Sept 36.5 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
22 Sept 35.3 °C 11 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
23 Sept 33.5 °C 7 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
24 Sept 34.9 °C 7 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
25 Sept 35.2 °C 12 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Sept 36.0 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Sept 36.1 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Sept 35.6 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
29 Sept 36.3 °C 12 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 92
30 Sept 36.6 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
1 Oct 37.0 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
2 Oct after 38.8 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
3 Oct after 38.9 °C 16 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
4 Oct after 33.4 °C 18 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 96
5 Oct after 31.6 °C 13 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
6 Oct after 32.1 °C 9 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
7 Oct after 32.2 °C 9 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
8 Oct after 33.3 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
9 Oct after 35.2 °C 14 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
10 Oct after 34.9 °C 8 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
11 Oct after 36.0 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2023
After · 8 Oct 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 9 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 65 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak65 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1093 µg/m³
Optical depth1.22
789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930123
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 · 1,357Every 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 9 September 2023 to 1 October 2023 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 September 2023 to 30 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 31,802 hectares (318.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (31,955 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 92, 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: 30 September 2023 → 1 October 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
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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 September 2023 to 30 September 2023. 1,357 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.