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Central Desert fire, 20 October 2023 Central Desert

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2023, 04:12 UTC

The fire started on 20 October 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 132,115 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 30th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3517 with a page). Number 16 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2021MacDonnell · 2022Central Desert · 2022

Burnt area
132,115ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
20 Oct 2023 – 1 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Oct
2023
Heat detections
6,630
in a single hotspot: 247 MW
Danger at start
61
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
4.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Oct1 Nov
1 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

20 Oct 2023 · 3,194 MW · 594 21 Oct 2023 · 15,148 MW · 1011 22 Oct 2023 · 8,517 MW · 841 23 Oct 2023 · 4,251 MW · 313 24 Oct 2023 · 6,814 MW · 2057 25 Oct 2023 · 5,371 MW · 482 26 Oct 2023 · 3,895 MW · 157 27 Oct 2023 · 2,009 MW · 208 28 Oct 2023 · 2,429 MW · 243 29 Oct 2023 · 3,562 MW · 260 30 Oct 2023 · 2,310 MW · 162 31 Oct 2023 · 2,063 MW · 221 1 Nov 2023 · 1,369 MW · 81
20 Oct 21 Oct 22 Oct 24 Oct 26 Oct 28 Oct 30 Oct 1 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
62km/h · peak gust
4%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 32 ha in 2017, 87 ha in 2018, 15,341 ha in 2021, 1,688 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 83% of the area of London (1,321 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
    134,275 ha reached on 20 Oct
    0.5 %

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 area1.2 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 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)
20 Oct 36.3 °C 5 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Oct 34.9 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
22 Oct 33.3 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 Oct 36.4 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
24 Oct 36.8 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
25 Oct 28.4 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
26 Oct 26.5 °C 11 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
27 Oct 28.4 °C 5 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
28 Oct 31.4 °C 4 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
29 Oct 34.3 °C 4 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
30 Oct 37.8 °C 5 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
31 Oct 38.0 °C 6 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
1 Nov 36.7 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
2 Nov after 34.1 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 51
3 Nov after 34.7 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 53
4 Nov after 34.9 °C 12 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
5 Nov after 35.7 °C 9 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
6 Nov after 36.2 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Nov after 37.7 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
8 Nov after 35.7 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
9 Nov after 33.4 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
10 Nov after 35.6 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 58
11 Nov after 33.8 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 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 23 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 139 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 62: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak139 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10198 µg/m³
Optical depth1.79
1819202122232425262728293031123
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 · 6,630Every 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 20 October 2023 to 1 November 2023 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 October 2023 to 31 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 132,115 hectares (1,321.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Desert (134,275 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 78, 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. Last day with fire: 31 October 2023 → 1 November 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 20 October 2023 to 31 October 2023. 6,630 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.