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Central Desert fire, 3 October 2023 Central Desert

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2023, 05:53 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 67,229 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 117th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 64 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
67,229ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
3 Oct 2023 – 1 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Oct
2023
Heat detections
2,822
in a single hotspot: 341 MW
Danger at start
76
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct1 Nov
1 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

3 Oct 2023 · 15 MW · 5 4 Oct 2023 · 8 MW · 4 5 Oct 2023 · 76 MW · 12 6 Oct 2023 · 34 MW · 16 7 Oct 2023 · 68 MW · 17 8 Oct 2023 · 109 MW · 12 9 Oct 2023 · 170 MW · 25 10 Oct 2023 · 208 MW · 48 11 Oct 2023 · 518 MW · 47 12 Oct 2023 · 278 MW · 53 13 Oct 2023 · 299 MW · 50 14 Oct 2023 · 493 MW · 43 15 Oct 2023 · 338 MW · 44 16 Oct 2023 · 299 MW · 37 17 Oct 2023 · 120 MW · 19 18 Oct 2023 · 154 MW · 34 19 Oct 2023 · 3,657 MW · 107 20 Oct 2023 · 4,490 MW · 284 21 Oct 2023 · 14,077 MW · 477 22 Oct 2023 · 3,774 MW · 301 23 Oct 2023 · 7,470 MW · 202 24 Oct 2023 · 3,562 MW · 235 25 Oct 2023 · 662 MW · 170 26 Oct 2023 · 271 MW · 76 27 Oct 2023 · 1,098 MW · 113 28 Oct 2023 · 505 MW · 60 29 Oct 2023 · 393 MW · 50 30 Oct 2023 · 1,419 MW · 161 31 Oct 2023 · 2,861 MW · 110 1 Nov 2023 · 77 MW · 10
3 Oct 8 Oct 13 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 23 Oct 28 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
57km/h · peak gust
3%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 2 Nov.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 30 ha in 2016, 198 ha in 2017, 133 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 42% of the area of London (672 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
    67,333 ha reached on 3 Oct
    0.2 %

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 area0.33 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.33 hectares of 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)
3 Oct 38.6 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
4 Oct 33.5 °C 9 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
5 Oct 32.5 °C 9 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
6 Oct 32.1 °C 9 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 90
7 Oct 31.0 °C 8 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
8 Oct 32.3 °C 11 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
9 Oct 33.5 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
10 Oct 34.4 °C 7 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
11 Oct 35.1 °C 7 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
12 Oct 37.4 °C 6 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
13 Oct 36.7 °C 10 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 94
14 Oct 34.7 °C 9 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
15 Oct 34.4 °C 6 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
16 Oct 35.1 °C 7 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 89
17 Oct 35.0 °C 8 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 87
18 Oct 35.1 °C 7 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
19 Oct 36.1 °C 6 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Oct 37.9 °C 5 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 Oct 38.4 °C 5 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Oct 38.1 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
23 Oct 38.5 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
24 Oct 39.1 °C 17 % 42 km/h 1.9 mm Extreme 51
25 Oct 36.6 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
26 Oct 33.3 °C 11 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
27 Oct 33.8 °C 7 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
28 Oct 35.2 °C 4 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
29 Oct 37.2 °C 3 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
30 Oct 39.8 °C 5 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
31 Oct 40.2 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
1 Nov 40.3 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
2 Nov after 38.0 °C 21 % 44 km/h 1.7 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Sept 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 20 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 264 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 108: 7.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak264 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM10376 µg/m³
Optical depth4.09
6789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311234
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 · 2,822Every 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 3 October 2023 to 1 November 2023 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 October 2023 to 1 November 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 67,229 hectares (672.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Desert (67,333 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 94, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 8 October 2023 → 3 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 October 2023 to 1 November 2023. 2,822 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.