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Broome fire, December 2023 Broome

Out · last detection 15 Dec 2023, 05:28 UTC

The fire started on 9 December 2023 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,777 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1793th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 903 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
6,777ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
9 Dec 2023 – 15 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Dec
2023
Heat detections
333
in a single hotspot: 265 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
9.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Dec 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Dec15 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

910111215

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
68km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,731 ha in 2019, 13 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Broome where it started
    6,881 ha reached on 9 Dec
    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)
9 Dec 36.4 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 41
10 Dec 36.8 °C 10 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 95
11 Dec 36.5 °C 7 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 95
12 Dec 37.2 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
13 Dec 39.4 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
14 Dec 38.3 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
15 Dec 39.9 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
16 Dec after 38.0 °C 29 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
17 Dec after 34.8 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Dec after 34.5 °C 38 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Dec after 37.1 °C 33 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Dec after 38.7 °C 32 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 Dec after 35.0 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Dec after 33.1 °C 58 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Dec after 35.7 °C 51 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Dec after 35.0 °C 50 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Dec after 38.8 °C 33 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Dec 2023
After · 22 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 12 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1028 µg/m³
Optical depth0.39
789101112131415161718
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 · 333Every 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 9 December 2023 and 15 December 2023: 7 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 6,777 hectares (67.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (6,881 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 95, class Very 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
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.