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AU · Australia · →

Broome fire, March 2023 Broome

Out · last detection 11 Mar 2023, 17:12 UTC

The fire started on 8 March 2023 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,293 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2522th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 1168 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
5,293ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
8 Mar 2023 – 11 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Mar
2023
Heat detections
147
in a single hotspot: 273 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
5.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Mar 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Mar11 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

891011

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
40km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 100 ha in 2017, 494 ha in 2018, 223 ha in 2019, 8 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    5,361 ha reached on 8 Mar
    0.1 %

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 Mar 38.8 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Mar 38.3 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Mar 38.3 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Mar 39.2 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Mar after 38.6 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Mar after 38.3 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Mar after 39.7 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Mar after 40.3 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Mar after 40.3 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Mar after 40.0 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
18 Mar after 40.7 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Mar after 39.5 °C 26 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Mar after 39.0 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Mar after 38.0 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Mar 2023
After · 18 Mar 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 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 164 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 57: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak164 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10234 µg/m³
Optical depth1.51
67891011121314
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 · 147Every 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 Broome fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 March 2023 and 11 March 2023: 4 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 5,293 hectares (52.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (5,361 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

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.