Broome fire, September 2022 Broome
The fire started on 20 September 2022 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,848 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 475th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 86 in Australia in 2022, of 566.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Broome · 2020Broome · 2018Broome · 2018Broome · 2018
- Burnt area
- 16,848ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 20 Sept 2022 – 28 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 20 Sept
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 550
- in a single hotspot: 238 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 709MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 22.2 mm on 30 Sept.
This area had burned before
83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,544 ha in 2017, 9,339 ha in 2018, 1,574 ha in 2019, 9,612 ha in 2020, 1,114 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,960 ha that had burned before.
- 6,254 ha Broome fire, May 2020 11,356 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,553 ha Broome fire, June 2018 9,900 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 371 ha Broome fire, October 2018 6,461 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 288 ha Broome fire, October 2018 5,619 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 249 ha Derby-West Kimberley fire, August 2021 48,416 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Broome where it started16,837 ha reached on 20 Sept0.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Sept | 32.9 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 21 Sept | 35.2 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 22 Sept | 36.5 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 23 Sept | 31.5 °C | 41 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 24 Sept | 35.1 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 25 Sept | 32.7 °C | 39 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Sept | 33.8 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 27 Sept | 34.8 °C | 23 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 28 Sept | 33.6 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 29 Sept after | 30.8 °C | 52 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 30 Sept after | 26.6 °C | 82 % | 38 km/h | 22.2 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 24 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 74 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 550Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 19,595 haBroome28 September 2026 · 13 days · 7 km away
- 48,416 haDerby-West Kimberley12 August 2021 · 14 days · 19 km away
- 26,901 haBroomeOctober 2022 · 9 days · 30 km away
- 21,369 haBroome14 October 2023 · 7 days · 37 km away
- 39,443 haBroome21 September 2021 · 30 days · 38 km away
- 23,045 haBroome20 September 2025 · 9 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Broome fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 September 2022 and 28 September 2022: 9 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 16,848 hectares (168.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Broome (16,837 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 550 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.
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.