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Broome fire, 23 May 2023 Broome

Out · last detection 1 Jun 2023, 05:24 UTC

The fire started on 23 May 2023 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,314 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 238th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2732 with a page). Number 210 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2018Broome · 2022Broome · 2023Broome · 2026

Burnt area
25,314ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
23 May 2023 – 1 Jun 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
23 May
2023
Heat detections
823
in a single hotspot: 283 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 May1 Jun
1 Jun 2023

How it evolved, day by day

23 May 2023 · 119 MW · 15 24 May 2023 · 174 MW · 12 25 May 2023 · 153 MW · 35 26 May 2023 · 2,641 MW · 162 27 May 2023 · 3,705 MW · 234 28 May 2023 · 3,348 MW · 183 29 May 2023 · 327 MW · 78 30 May 2023 · 193 MW · 51 31 May 2023 · 218 MW · 27 1 Jun 2023 · 599 MW · 26
23 May 25 May 27 May 29 May 31 May

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
54km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,207 ha in 2018, 1,122 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (253 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. Broome where it started
    25,495 ha reached on 23 May
    0.5 %

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)
23 May 29.1 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 May 30.6 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 May 31.4 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 May 30.4 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
27 May 30.9 °C 23 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
28 May 28.0 °C 14 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
29 May 28.2 °C 13 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
30 May 29.1 °C 13 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
31 May 30.1 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Jun 29.8 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Jun after 29.3 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Jun after 28.4 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Jun after 29.3 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Jun after 26.6 °C 51 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Jun after 26.8 °C 55 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Jun after 29.0 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Jun after 31.0 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Jun after 32.7 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Jun after 32.4 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Jun after 32.0 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 May 2023
After · 8 Jun 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 24 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 189 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 62: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak189 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10270 µg/m³
Optical depth1.37
21222324252627282930311234
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 · 823Every 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 23 May 2023 and 1 June 2023: 10 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 25,314 hectares (253.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (25,495 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 823 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.