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Barkly fire, 12 September 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 24 Sept 2023, 15:37 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,495 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1380th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 527 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2025Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2024Barkly · 2017

Burnt area
10,495ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
12 Sept 2023 – 26 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
12 Sept
2023
Heat detections
467
in a single hotspot: 234 MW
Danger at start
77
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
213MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept26 Sept
24 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 2023 · 84 MW · 49 13 Sept 2023 · 255 MW · 84 14 Sept 2023 · 357 MW · 83 15 Sept 2023 · 829 MW · 67 16 Sept 2023 · 612 MW · 84 17 Sept 2023 · 164 MW · 28 18 Sept 2023 · 102 MW · 15 19 Sept 2023 · 163 MW · 15 20 Sept 2023 · 51 MW · 7 21 Sept 2023 · 12 MW · 7 22 Sept 2023 · 46 MW · 13 23 Sept 2023 · 23 MW · 9 24 Sept 2023 · 72 MW · 6
12 Sept 14 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 24 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

36°high
59km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 801 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 733 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.6% of the area of London (105 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
    10,570 ha reached on 12 Sept
    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)
12 Sept 29.4 °C 12 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
13 Sept 29.6 °C 14 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
14 Sept 30.4 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
15 Sept 31.4 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
16 Sept 32.3 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
17 Sept 32.7 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Sept 32.1 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Sept 32.8 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
20 Sept 34.3 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Sept 35.6 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
22 Sept 33.8 °C 11 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
23 Sept 32.6 °C 8 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
24 Sept 34.2 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
25 Sept 34.2 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Sept 34.5 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
27 Sept after 35.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
28 Sept after 34.8 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
29 Sept after 35.3 °C 12 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
30 Sept after 35.4 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Oct after 35.6 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
2 Oct after 37.1 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
3 Oct after 38.1 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
4 Oct after 30.9 °C 18 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 91

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Sept 2023
After · 3 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 13 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 78 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak78 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10113 µg/m³
Optical depth1.54
101112131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 467Every 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 12 September 2023 to 26 September 2023 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2023 to 24 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,495 hectares (105.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (10,570 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, 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: 24 September 2023 → 26 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
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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 September 2023 to 24 September 2023. 467 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.