Roper Gulf fire, 23 October 2022 Roper Gulf
The fire started on 23 October 2022 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,191 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1279th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3519 with a page). Number 165 in Australia in 2022, of 566.
The power measured by the satellite is low (26.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 11,191ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 23 Oct 2022 – 6 Nov 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 23 Oct
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 391
- in a single hotspot: 26 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 182MW
- 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 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.6 mm on 10 Nov.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,017 ha in 2016, 2,286 ha in 2017, 2,608 ha in 2018, 10,829 ha in 2019, 2,072 ha in 2020, 6,166 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,087 ha that had burned before.
- 8,136 ha Roper Gulf fire, December 2019 18,192 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,495 ha Roper Gulf fire, May 2019 16,610 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,428 ha Roper Gulf fire, September 2021 7,348 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,230 ha Roper Gulf fire, December 2016 10,877 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 793 ha Roper Gulf fire, September 2021 20,713 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 737 ha Roper Gulf fire, June 2021 6,075 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
-
Roper Gulf where it started11,301 ha reached on 23 Oct0.1 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Oct | 36.3 °C | 30 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 24 Oct | 36.7 °C | 43 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 25 Oct | 36.4 °C | 43 % | 46 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Oct | 36.4 °C | 34 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 27 Oct | 38.9 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 28 Oct | 39.5 °C | 20 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 29 Oct | 38.7 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 30 Oct | 38.6 °C | 31 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 31 Oct | 39.2 °C | 28 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 1 Nov | 40.0 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.8 mm | Very high 38 |
| 2 Nov | 35.4 °C | 25 % | 46 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very high 45 |
| 3 Nov | 35.5 °C | 13 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 4 Nov | 36.1 °C | 10 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 5 Nov | 37.6 °C | 8 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 6 Nov | 36.9 °C | 15 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 7 Nov after | 35.8 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 48 |
| 8 Nov after | 35.5 °C | 40 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 9 Nov after | 35.7 °C | 37 % | 43 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 40 |
| 10 Nov after | 34.9 °C | 51 % | 34 km/h | 6.6 mm | Low 8 |
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 29 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 174 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.6 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 · 391Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 21,726 haRoper Gulf19 July 2026 · 18 days · 10 km away
- 30,457 haRoper Gulf29 October 2025 · 18 days · 20 km away
- 20,713 haRoper Gulf7 September 2021 · 23 days · 20 km away
- 20,670 haRoper Gulf1 August 2019 · 16 days · 24 km away
- 77,341 haRoper Gulf25 October 2020 · 40 days · 28 km away
- 47,665 haRoper Gulf7 August 2019 · 30 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Roper Gulf fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 October 2022 to 6 November 2022 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 October 2022 to 5 November 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,191 hectares (111.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Roper Gulf (11,301 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 5 November 2022 → 6 November 2022.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 October 2022 to 5 November 2022. 391 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 2020, 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 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.