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Central Desert fire, 16 October 2023 Central Desert, Barkly

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2023, 04:13 UTC

The fire started on 16 October 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 42,916 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 217th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 116 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2018Central Desert · 2018Barkly · 2018Central Desert · 2018

Burnt area
42,916ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
16 Oct 2023 – 1 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
16 Oct
2023
Heat detections
2,366
in a single hotspot: 371 MW
Danger at start
79
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Oct1 Nov
1 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

16 Oct 2023 · 2 MW · 1 17 Oct 2023 · 9,933 MW · 341 18 Oct 2023 · 5,854 MW · 445 19 Oct 2023 · 2,831 MW · 239 20 Oct 2023 · 1,864 MW · 159 21 Oct 2023 · 884 MW · 110 22 Oct 2023 · 2,829 MW · 148 23 Oct 2023 · 580 MW · 74 24 Oct 2023 · 1,067 MW · 113 25 Oct 2023 · 806 MW · 163 26 Oct 2023 · 1,262 MW · 244 27 Oct 2023 · 964 MW · 154 28 Oct 2023 · 242 MW · 86 29 Oct 2023 · 201 MW · 52 30 Oct 2023 · 267 MW · 21 31 Oct 2023 · 68 MW · 12 1 Nov 2023 · 39 MW · 4
16 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 22 Oct 25 Oct 28 Oct 31 Oct

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
56km/h · peak gust
4%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 10 Nov.

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 642 ha in 2016, 10,113 ha in 2018, 651 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 27% of the area of London (429 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
    25,649 ha reached on 17 Oct
    0.1 %
  2. Barkly
    17,017 ha reached on 16 Oct
    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 Oct 35.8 °C 7 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
17 Oct 35.3 °C 10 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
18 Oct 35.6 °C 7 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
19 Oct 36.9 °C 6 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Oct 38.2 °C 6 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Oct 39.2 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
22 Oct 38.8 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
23 Oct 38.5 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
24 Oct 40.0 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
25 Oct 37.8 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
26 Oct 34.1 °C 12 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
27 Oct 33.5 °C 8 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
28 Oct 35.8 °C 4 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
29 Oct 37.7 °C 5 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
30 Oct 39.5 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
31 Oct 39.2 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
1 Nov 39.2 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Nov after 38.0 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Nov after 40.2 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
4 Nov after 40.0 °C 12 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
5 Nov after 40.5 °C 10 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
6 Nov after 39.5 °C 9 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
7 Nov after 40.5 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Nov after 40.2 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Nov after 39.7 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 55
10 Nov after 37.0 °C 30 % 49 km/h 2.3 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Oct 2023
After · 8 Nov 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 19 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 169 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 86: 5.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak169 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10241 µg/m³
Optical depth3.22
1516171819202122232425262728293031123
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 · 2,366Every 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 October 2023 to 1 November 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 October 2023 to 31 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 42,916 hectares (429.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Desert (25,649 ha, 0.1 %); Barkly (17,017 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 83, 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: 31 October 2023 → 1 November 2023.
  2. Start date: 17 October 2023 → 16 October 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 October 2023 to 31 October 2023. 2,366 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.