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Central Desert fire, 16 August 2023 Central Desert

Out · last detection 22 Aug 2023, 04:45 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,498 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2098th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 790 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
7,498ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
16 Aug 2023 – 21 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
16 Aug
2023
Heat detections
314
in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
199MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

22 Aug 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug21 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 2023 · 391 MW · 18 17 Aug 2023 · 392 MW · 142 18 Aug 2023 · 81 MW · 29 19 Aug 2023 · 187 MW · 46 20 Aug 2023 · 198 MW · 40 21 Aug 2023 · 109 MW · 27 22 Aug 2023 · 36 MW · 5
16 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug 20 Aug 21 Aug 22 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
58km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 449 ha in 2016, 2,258 ha in 2017, 2,404 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,202 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Central Desert where it started
    7,432 ha reached on 15 Aug
    0.0 %

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)
15 Aug 31.6 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Aug 32.2 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Aug 32.5 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Aug 30.1 °C 25 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
19 Aug 27.2 °C 19 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
20 Aug 26.2 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Aug 27.5 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Aug after 29.5 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Aug after 29.3 °C 13 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
24 Aug after 29.2 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
25 Aug after 29.5 °C 15 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
26 Aug after 29.1 °C 12 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
27 Aug after 30.3 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
28 Aug after 30.5 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Aug after 31.4 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
30 Aug after 32.5 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
31 Aug after 31.6 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
1 Sept after 30.3 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
2 Sept after 30.7 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
3 Sept after 32.5 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Aug 2023
After · 28 Aug 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 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1016 µg/m³
Optical depth0.12
1415161718192021222324
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 · 314Every 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 Central Desert fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 August 2023 and 21 August 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 7,498 hectares (75.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Desert (7,432 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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

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.