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Central Desert fire, 23 September 2023 Central Desert

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2023, 05:53 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,985 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2793th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3514 with a page). Number 1013 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2025Central Desert · 2025Central Desert · 2026Central Desert · 2025

Burnt area
5,985ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
23 Sept 2023 – 30 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
23 Sept
2023
Heat detections
181
in a single hotspot: 154 MW
Danger at start
69
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
605MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept30 Sept
30 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

24 Sept 2023 · 230 MW · 33 25 Sept 2023 · 963 MW · 74 26 Sept 2023 · 1,448 MW · 37 27 Sept 2023 · 108 MW · 28 30 Sept 2023 · 276 MW · 9
24 Sept 25 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 30 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

35°high
58km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 48 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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
    6,035 ha reached on 24 Sept
    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)
23 Sept 32.8 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
24 Sept 33.7 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
25 Sept 34.8 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
26 Sept 35.4 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
27 Sept 35.4 °C 11 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
28 Sept 34.7 °C 12 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
29 Sept 34.0 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
30 Sept 34.9 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
1 Oct after 37.2 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Oct after 37.7 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
3 Oct after 37.9 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
4 Oct after 31.2 °C 8 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 90
5 Oct after 30.8 °C 9 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
6 Oct after 30.5 °C 10 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
7 Oct after 29.9 °C 9 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
8 Oct after 30.9 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
9 Oct after 32.4 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
10 Oct after 32.7 °C 6 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Sept 2023
After · 7 Oct 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 28 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1060 µg/m³
Optical depth1.62
22232425262728293012
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 · 181Every 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 23 September 2023 to 30 September 2023 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 September 2023 to 29 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,985 hectares (59.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Desert (6,035 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 86, 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: 29 September 2023 → 30 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 24 September 2023 → 23 September 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 24 September 2023 to 29 September 2023. 181 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.