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AU · Australia · –

East Arnhem fire, 7 October 2025 East Arnhem

Out · last detection 3 Nov 2025, 05:15 UTC

The fire started on 7 October 2025 in East Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,079 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
9,079ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
7 Oct 2025 – 6 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
7 Oct
2025
Heat detections
365
in a single hotspot: 294 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
134MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Oct6 Nov
3 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

7 Oct 2025 · 89 MW · 11 8 Oct 2025 · 14 MW · 5 11 Oct 2025 · 12 MW · 2 12 Oct 2025 · 7 MW · 3 13 Oct 2025 · 25 MW · 10 14 Oct 2025 · 597 MW · 21 15 Oct 2025 · 8 MW · 2 16 Oct 2025 · 13 MW · 4 17 Oct 2025 · 1 MW · 1 18 Oct 2025 · 3 MW · 2 19 Oct 2025 · 147 MW · 17 20 Oct 2025 · 147 MW · 20 21 Oct 2025 · 283 MW · 20 22 Oct 2025 · 62 MW · 14 23 Oct 2025 · 33 MW · 4 24 Oct 2025 · 247 MW · 26 25 Oct 2025 · 617 MW · 37 26 Oct 2025 · 179 MW · 26 27 Oct 2025 · 192 MW · 20 28 Oct 2025 · 111 MW · 11 29 Oct 2025 · 147 MW · 25 30 Oct 2025 · 176 MW · 26 31 Oct 2025 · 175 MW · 24 1 Nov 2025 · 167 MW · 30 2 Nov 2025 · 2 MW · 1 3 Nov 2025 · 24 MW · 3
7 Oct 15 Oct 25 Oct 2 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

36°high
49km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 9 Nov.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,546 ha in 2016, 1,715 ha in 2017, 7,393 ha in 2018, 2,833 ha in 2021, 106 ha in 2022, 504 ha in 2023, 862 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,512 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (91 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. East Arnhem where it started
    9,102 ha reached on 7 Oct
    0.3 %

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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 34 % of the area in Australia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
7 Oct 34.7 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Oct 32.5 °C 54 % 38 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 17
9 Oct 32.1 °C 57 % 39 km/h 3.1 mm Low 7
10 Oct 33.1 °C 53 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
11 Oct 33.8 °C 52 % 33 km/h 3.4 mm Low 8
12 Oct 32.4 °C 55 % 27 km/h 2.2 mm Low 7
13 Oct 33.8 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
14 Oct 34.2 °C 50 % 42 km/h 5.1 mm Low 7
15 Oct 33.2 °C 47 % 48 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 18
16 Oct 35.0 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm High 24
17 Oct 32.5 °C 59 % 49 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 16
18 Oct 33.6 °C 55 % 39 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 12
19 Oct 35.1 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
20 Oct 34.7 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Oct 35.0 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Oct 34.1 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Oct 33.4 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Oct 33.8 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 Oct 33.6 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Oct 34.6 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Oct 32.8 °C 57 % 34 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 21
28 Oct 35.0 °C 49 % 39 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 20
29 Oct 35.0 °C 46 % 28 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 15
30 Oct 35.7 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
31 Oct 35.1 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
1 Nov 36.0 °C 46 % 32 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 18
2 Nov 35.6 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
3 Nov 34.2 °C 45 % 30 km/h 2.8 mm Moderate 12
4 Nov 33.9 °C 57 % 35 km/h 8.0 mm Very low 4
5 Nov 32.9 °C 55 % 41 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 12
6 Nov 32.8 °C 55 % 35 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 14
7 Nov after 34.3 °C 45 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
8 Nov after 34.8 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
9 Nov after 34.9 °C 45 % 39 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Sept 2025
After · 13 Nov 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 7 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1029 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
5 Oct12 Oct19 Oct26 Oct2 Nov
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 · 365Every 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 East Arnhem fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 October 2025 to 6 November 2025 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 October 2025 to 5 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,079 hectares (90.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered East Arnhem (9,102 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
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: 5 November 2025 → 6 November 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 7 October 2025 to 5 November 2025. 365 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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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.