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Central Desert fire, 4 July 2025 Central Desert

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2025, 04:40 UTC

The fire started on 4 July 2025 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,991 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1307th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3511 with a page). Number 442 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2023Central Desert · 2025Central Desert · 2025Central Desert · 2025

Burnt area
10,991ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
4 Jul 2025 – 21 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Jul
2025
Heat detections
377
in a single hotspot: 194 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
188MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jul21 Jul
21 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jul 2025 · 23 MW · 4 5 Jul 2025 · 1,143 MW · 27 6 Jul 2025 · 107 MW · 16 7 Jul 2025 · 138 MW · 25 8 Jul 2025 · 98 MW · 33 9 Jul 2025 · 542 MW · 36 10 Jul 2025 · 149 MW · 44 11 Jul 2025 · 112 MW · 32 12 Jul 2025 · 163 MW · 41 13 Jul 2025 · 48 MW · 18 14 Jul 2025 · 82 MW · 21 15 Jul 2025 · 554 MW · 30 16 Jul 2025 · 38 MW · 11 17 Jul 2025 · 30 MW · 9 18 Jul 2025 · 4 MW · 2 19 Jul 2025 · 24 MW · 8 20 Jul 2025 · 94 MW · 13 21 Jul 2025 · 31 MW · 7
4 Jul 5 Jul 7 Jul 10 Jul 13 Jul 16 Jul 19 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
52km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,367 ha in 2017, 32 ha in 2021, 7,690 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,138 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.9% of the area of London (110 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
    10,879 ha reached on 4 Jul
    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)
4 Jul 30.1 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jul 28.5 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Jul 29.2 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Jul 28.2 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Jul 28.3 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Jul 29.3 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Jul 26.7 °C 18 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Jul 24.6 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jul 28.5 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Jul 30.3 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jul 30.3 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Jul 31.8 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Jul 29.5 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
17 Jul 28.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Jul 26.0 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Jul 26.3 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Jul 26.6 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Jul 28.6 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Jul after 29.1 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Jul after 29.9 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Jul after 31.4 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Jul after 31.9 °C 31 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Jul after 25.8 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Jul after 30.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jul after 32.3 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
29 Jul after 27.1 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Jul after 26.6 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Jul after 25.1 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jun 2025
After · 28 Jul 2025

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 8 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1057 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
34567891011121314151617181920212223
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 · 377Every 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 4 July 2025 to 21 July 2025 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 July 2025 to 20 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,991 hectares (109.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Desert (10,879 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class 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: 20 July 2025 → 21 July 2025.
  2. Start date: 5 July 2025 → 4 July 2025.

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 5 July 2025 to 20 July 2025. 377 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.