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Litchfield fire, August 2023 Litchfield

Out · last detection 30 Aug 2023, 16:44 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2023 in Litchfield, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,502 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2100th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 789 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Litchfield · 2017Litchfield · 2025Unincorporated NT · 2022

Burnt area
7,502ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
20 Aug 2023 – 30 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Aug
2023
Heat detections
340
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
228MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug30 Aug
30 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

20 Aug 2023 · 69 MW · 11 21 Aug 2023 · 250 MW · 16 22 Aug 2023 · 51 MW · 13 23 Aug 2023 · 234 MW · 12 24 Aug 2023 · 79 MW · 20 25 Aug 2023 · 179 MW · 39 26 Aug 2023 · 632 MW · 111 27 Aug 2023 · 777 MW · 82 28 Aug 2023 · 160 MW · 16 29 Aug 2023 · 33 MW · 5 30 Aug 2023 · 43 MW · 7
20 Aug 22 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 27 Aug 28 Aug 30 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
51km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,634 ha in 2016, 4,915 ha in 2017, 3,711 ha in 2018, 6,125 ha in 2019, 3,056 ha in 2020, 1,215 ha in 2021, 4,339 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,418 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (75 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. Litchfield where it started
    7,546 ha reached on 18 Aug
    2.6 %

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)
13 Aug 32.7 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Aug 32.6 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Aug 32.2 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Aug 31.7 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Aug 31.5 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Aug 32.6 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Aug 34.3 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Aug 32.9 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Aug 32.1 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
22 Aug 33.0 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Aug 34.2 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Aug 34.1 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Aug 34.8 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Aug 34.2 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Aug 34.0 °C 26 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
28 Aug 33.8 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Aug 34.2 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Aug 33.9 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Aug after 33.8 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept after 33.6 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Sept after 33.3 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Sept after 32.5 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Sept after 31.6 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Sept after 33.1 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Sept after 33.1 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Sept after 34.3 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Sept after 34.6 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept after 35.7 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Sept after 35.5 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept after 36.2 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Sept after 35.4 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept after 34.2 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Sept after 33.7 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Aug 2023
After · 6 Sept 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 21 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1068 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
181920212223242526272829303112
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 · 340Every 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 Litchfield fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2023 and 30 August 2023: 11 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 7,502 hectares (75.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Litchfield (7,546 ha, 2.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 340 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.