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Barkly fire, 15 December 2023 Roper Gulf, Barkly

Out · last detection 23 Dec 2023, 15:48 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2023 in Barkly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,046 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1911th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 729 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2017Victoria Daly · 2025Roper Gulf · 2026Barkly · 2024

Burnt area
8,046ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
15 Dec 2023 – 23 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
15 Dec
2023
Heat detections
267
in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
331MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec23 Dec
23 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Dec 2023 · 323 MW · 10 16 Dec 2023 · 50 MW · 21 17 Dec 2023 · 538 MW · 83 18 Dec 2023 · 1,010 MW · 105 19 Dec 2023 · 232 MW · 33 22 Dec 2023 · 96 MW · 5 23 Dec 2023 · 68 MW · 10
15 Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec 22 Dec 23 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
40km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 25 Dec.

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,607 ha in 2017, 300 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (80 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. Roper Gulf
    6,150 ha reached on 16 Dec
    0.0 %
  2. Barkly where it started
    1,946 ha reached on 15 Dec
    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)
15 Dec 38.2 °C 33 % 28 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Dec 39.7 °C 26 % 40 km/h 1.5 mm High 23
17 Dec 41.5 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Dec 41.0 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Dec 39.8 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Dec 38.3 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.6 mm High 28
21 Dec 38.0 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
22 Dec 39.5 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Dec 40.9 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Dec after 40.3 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Dec after 40.3 °C 30 % 40 km/h 1.4 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2023
After · 30 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 22 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1040 µg/m³
Optical depth0.84
141516171819202122
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 · 267Every 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 15 December 2023 to 23 December 2023 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 December 2023 to 19 December 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,046 hectares (80.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Roper Gulf (6,150 ha, 0.0 %); Barkly (1,946 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 19 December 2023 → 23 December 2023.
  2. Start date: 16 December 2023 → 15 December 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 16 December 2023 to 19 December 2023. 267 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.