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Broome fire, 4 November 2023 Broome

Out · last detection 10 Nov 2023, 04:45 UTC

The fire started on 4 November 2023 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,459 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 967th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 529 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2018Broome · 2026Broome · 2021Broome · 2026

Burnt area
10,459ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
4 Nov 2023 – 9 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Nov
2023
Heat detections
303
in a single hotspot: 373 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
836MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov9 Nov
10 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Nov 2023 · 1,059 MW · 17 5 Nov 2023 · 1,326 MW · 97 6 Nov 2023 · 1,978 MW · 70 7 Nov 2023 · 184 MW · 37 8 Nov 2023 · 1,291 MW · 67 9 Nov 2023 · 11 MW · 3 10 Nov 2023 · 2 MW · 1
4 Nov 5 Nov 6 Nov 7 Nov 8 Nov 9 Nov 10 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
43km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 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: 1,734 ha in 2018, 1,021 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,183 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.6% of the area of London (105 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
    10,512 ha reached on 4 Nov
    0.2 %

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)
4 Nov 38.1 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Nov 39.9 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Nov 36.1 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 41
7 Nov 35.8 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 38
8 Nov 36.1 °C 44 % 38 km/h 1.7 mm High 24
9 Nov 35.4 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
10 Nov after 34.1 °C 48 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Nov after 33.8 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Nov after 34.8 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Nov after 35.3 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Nov after 35.1 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Nov after 35.6 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Nov after 35.6 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Nov after 36.3 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Nov after 37.4 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Nov after 40.0 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
20 Nov after 38.5 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 46
21 Nov after 36.7 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 41
22 Nov after 38.5 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
23 Nov after 36.0 °C 43 % 39 km/h 0.8 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2023
After · 16 Nov 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 5 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1077 µg/m³
Optical depth0.99
23456789101112
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 · 303Every 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 4 November 2023 and 9 November 2023: 6 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 10,459 hectares (104.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (10,512 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 43 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 · 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. 303 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.