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Central Desert fire, 16 August 2023 Central Desert

Out · last detection 5 Sept 2023, 05:23 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,188 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1428th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3511 with a page). Number 548 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2018Central Desert · 2021Central Desert · 2017Central Desert · 2017

Burnt area
10,188ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
16 Aug 2023 – 5 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
16 Aug
2023
Heat detections
442
in a single hotspot: 137 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
122MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug5 Sept
5 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 2023 · 2 MW · 2 17 Aug 2023 · 352 MW · 39 18 Aug 2023 · 627 MW · 73 19 Aug 2023 · 129 MW · 43 20 Aug 2023 · 57 MW · 17 21 Aug 2023 · 25 MW · 9 22 Aug 2023 · 18 MW · 4 23 Aug 2023 · 55 MW · 11 24 Aug 2023 · 24 MW · 7 25 Aug 2023 · 68 MW · 19 26 Aug 2023 · 60 MW · 19 27 Aug 2023 · 82 MW · 26 28 Aug 2023 · 181 MW · 36 29 Aug 2023 · 194 MW · 32 30 Aug 2023 · 162 MW · 46 31 Aug 2023 · 203 MW · 28 1 Sept 2023 · 132 MW · 20 2 Sept 2023 · 13 MW · 3 3 Sept 2023 · 32 MW · 4 5 Sept 2023 · 27 MW · 4
16 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug 22 Aug 25 Aug 28 Aug 31 Aug 3 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

33°high
59km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 863 ha in 2017, 5,461 ha in 2018, 1,352 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,909 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (102 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. Central Desert where it started
    10,105 ha reached on 16 Aug
    0.0 %

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)
16 Aug 31.9 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Aug 32.0 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Aug 29.4 °C 25 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
19 Aug 26.6 °C 20 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
20 Aug 25.7 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Aug 27.0 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Aug 29.0 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Aug 28.8 °C 13 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
24 Aug 28.8 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
25 Aug 29.0 °C 15 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
26 Aug 28.7 °C 12 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
27 Aug 29.9 °C 12 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
28 Aug 30.1 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
29 Aug 31.0 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
30 Aug 32.0 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
31 Aug 31.0 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
1 Sept 29.7 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
2 Sept 30.4 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
3 Sept 32.3 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
4 Sept 33.0 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Sept 33.2 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
6 Sept after 33.0 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Sept after 33.8 °C 18 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Sept after 30.8 °C 18 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
9 Sept after 30.9 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
10 Sept after 31.7 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Sept after 31.5 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
12 Sept after 28.9 °C 8 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
13 Sept after 30.8 °C 13 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
14 Sept after 31.0 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Sept after 31.9 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Aug 2023
After · 12 Sept 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 26 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1028 µg/m³
Optical depth0.33
15161718192021222324252627282930311234
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 · 442Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 August 2023 to 5 September 2023 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 August 2023 to 1 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,188 hectares (101.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Desert (10,105 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 September 2023 → 5 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 17 August 2023 → 16 August 2023.

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 17 August 2023 to 1 September 2023. 442 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.