Central Desert fire, 23 August 2025 Central Desert
The fire started on 23 August 2025 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,803 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 853th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 279 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 15,803ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 23 Aug 2025 – 4 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 23 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 630
- in a single hotspot: 155 MW
- Danger at start
- 73
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 383MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 38 ha in 2017, 8,398 ha in 2018, 6,916 ha in 2023, 192 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,502 ha that had burned before.
- 4,049 ha Central Desert fire, May 2018 10,041 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,792 ha Central Desert fire, October 2023 91,458 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,937 ha Central Desert fire, October 2023 207,590 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 386 ha Central Desert fire, September 2018 14,686 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 217 ha Central Desert fire, September 2018 5,682 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 24 ha Central Desert fire, September 2017 6,219 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Central Desert where it started15,764 ha reached on 23 Aug0.1 %
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.
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 Aug | 32.6 °C | 7 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 24 Aug | 33.5 °C | 7 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 25 Aug | 34.9 °C | 9 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 26 Aug | 34.3 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 27 Aug | 28.2 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 28 Aug | 30.3 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 29 Aug | 30.0 °C | 12 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 30 Aug | 27.4 °C | 16 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 81 |
| 31 Aug | 25.1 °C | 16 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 1 Sept | 27.4 °C | 14 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 2 Sept | 27.5 °C | 10 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 3 Sept | 27.2 °C | 8 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 4 Sept | 29.2 °C | 7 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 5 Sept after | 32.4 °C | 6 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 6 Sept after | 34.4 °C | 10 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 7 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 17 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 8 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.9 mm | Very high 42 |
| 9 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 10 Sept after | 31.1 °C | 15 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 11 Sept after | 28.4 °C | 18 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 12 Sept after | 26.9 °C | 17 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 13 Sept after | 26.6 °C | 13 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 14 Sept after | 30.0 °C | 9 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 15 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 7 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 16 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 7 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 17 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 14 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 18 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 19 Sept after | 36.8 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 28 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 48 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 630Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Central Desert fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 August 2025 and 4 September 2025: 13 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,803 hectares (158.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Central Desert (15,764 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 81, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 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.
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.