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Carpentaria fire, 15 September 2022 Carpentaria

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2022, 04:45 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2022 in Carpentaria, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,714 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1043th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 297 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Carpentaria · 2019Carpentaria · 2021Carpentaria · 2026Carpentaria · 2025

Burnt area
7,714ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
15 Sept 2022 – 19 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Sept
2022
Heat detections
243
in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
430MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept19 Sept
20 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

15 Sept 2022 · 1,582 MW · 126 16 Sept 2022 · 485 MW · 74 17 Sept 2022 · 424 MW · 31 18 Sept 2022 · 40 MW · 6 19 Sept 2022 · 42 MW · 5 20 Sept 2022 · 4 MW · 1
15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept

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
36km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,252 ha in 2016, 3,151 ha in 2019, 258 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,874 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (77 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. Carpentaria where it started
    7,738 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
15 Sept 36.9 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Sept 37.8 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Sept 38.7 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
18 Sept 39.8 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Sept 38.8 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Sept after 39.9 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Sept after 38.9 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Sept after 38.1 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Sept after 38.4 °C 7 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
24 Sept after 38.1 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Sept after 38.1 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Sept after 38.6 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Sept after 38.9 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Sept after 36.2 °C 20 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
29 Sept after 36.2 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
30 Sept after 36.7 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2022
After · 26 Sept 2022

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 18 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 68 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak68 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10250 µg/m³
Optical depth0.75
1314151617181920
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 · 243Every 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 Carpentaria fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2022 to 19 September 2022 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 September 2022 to 17 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,714 hectares (77.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Carpentaria (7,738 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 17 September 2022 → 19 September 2022.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 September 2022 to 17 September 2022. 243 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 2020, 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.