Merauke fire, 5 October 2023 Merauke
The fire started on 5 October 2023 in Merauke, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,020 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 65th largest in Papua since 2016 (of 356 with a page). Number 15 in Indonesia in 2023, of 165.
Compare with…
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 5,020ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 5 Oct 2023 – 11 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- regencies
- Started on
- 5 Oct
- 2023
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.2 mm on 12 Oct.
This area had burned before
4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 187 ha in 2018.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Jakarta boundary: geoBoundaries · Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS - Statistics Indonesia), World Food Programme, OCHA ROAP (CC BY 3.0 IGO).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Merauke where it started5,049 ha0.1 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Oct | 34.6 °C | 37 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 6 Oct | 34.3 °C | 36 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 7 Oct | 33.7 °C | 49 % | 43 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 22 |
| 8 Oct | 34.3 °C | 37 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 9 Oct | 34.5 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 10 Oct | 33.9 °C | 41 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 11 Oct | 33.0 °C | 47 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 12 Oct after | 30.7 °C | 61 % | 37 km/h | 5.2 mm | Very low 4 |
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 11 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 53 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)
Other fires nearby
- 8,870 haMerauke2 September 2026 · 21 days · 5 km away
- 8,451 haMerauke24 July 2026 · 45 days · 16 km away
- 9,245 haMerauke24 September 2026 · 27 days · 19 km away
- 7,922 haMerauke1 September 2026 · 28 days · 21 km away
- 10,429 haMerauke 21 September 2026 · 38 days · 22 km away
- 12,343 haMerauke11 August 2026 · 45 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Merauke fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 October 2023 and 11 October 2023: 7 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 5,020 hectares (50.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Merauke (5,049 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Indonesia (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: 112 · 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. No 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.
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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.