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Barkly fire, 8 December 2023 Barkly

Out · last detection 13 Dec 2023, 04:25 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,361 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2145th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3493 with a page). Number 812 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
7,361ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
8 Dec 2023 – 12 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Dec
2023
Heat detections
227
in a single hotspot: 206 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
3.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Dec 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec12 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

89101213

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
46km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 857 ha in 2017, 108 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Barkly where it started
    7,377 ha reached on 8 Dec
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
8 Dec 38.4 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Dec 38.6 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Dec 37.4 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
11 Dec 33.3 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 52
12 Dec 36.9 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Dec after 41.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Dec after 41.2 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Dec after 40.5 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 53
16 Dec after 41.0 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Dec after 40.7 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
18 Dec after 42.4 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
19 Dec after 41.2 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Dec after 40.3 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Dec after 39.9 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
22 Dec after 40.0 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
23 Dec after 41.4 °C 6 % 26 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 · 1 Dec 2023
After · 19 Dec 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 7 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1051 µg/m³
Optical depth0.90
6789101112131415
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 · 227Every 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 8 December 2023 and 12 December 2023: 5 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 7,361 hectares (73.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barkly (7,377 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.