Burned area
satellite only9,690ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 20 Aug 2023 – 4 Sept 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Roper Gulf fire, 20 August 2023 Victoria Daly, Roper Gulf, West Arnhem
Out · last detection 4 Sept 2023, 16:51 UTC
The fire started on 20 August 2023 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,690 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
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.
Use this data
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Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-26matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only16days
20 Aug 2023 to 4 Sept 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 4 Sept 2023, 16:51 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only20 Aug 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 20 Aug 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only331
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 92 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 20 Aug 2023 – 4 Sept 2023
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only400MW
Total radiative power on 28 August 2023; hotspots that day: 27.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 28 Aug 2023
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model58.8FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 20 Aug 2023, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model34.1°C · 15% RH
High of 34.1 °C and minimum humidity of 15% on 31 August 2023; gusts of 53 km/h on 26 August 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 20 Aug 2023 – 4 Sept 2023
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 3 September 2023 → 4 September 2023.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 26 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 9,690 ha
- Dates
- 20 Aug 2023 – 4 Sept 2023
- Name
- Roper Gulf
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/roper-gulf-2023-08-14?v=2026-10-26A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire roper-gulf-2023-08-14.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-08-20 | 5 | 8 | 31.5 | 16 | 17 | 19.5 | 43.2 | 0 | 58.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-21 | 8 | 24 | 31.8 | 15.6 | 19 | 14.9 | 36.4 | 0 | 50.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-22 | 23 | 176 | 32.2 | 15 | 20 | 16.5 | 39.2 | 0 | 59.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-23 | 30 | 381 | 32.8 | 15.9 | 21 | 20.5 | 46.8 | 0 | 66.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-24 | 26 | 145 | 33.1 | 17 | 23 | 18.2 | 41.8 | 0 | 62.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-25 | 21 | 74 | 33.1 | 18.8 | 19 | 22.1 | 50.8 | 0 | 70.4 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-26 | 21 | 61 | 32.9 | 16.9 | 17 | 23.9 | 52.9 | 0 | 75.1 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-27 | 16 | 90 | 32.7 | 18.6 | 22 | 24.3 | 50.8 | 0 | 73.9 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-28 | 27 | 400 | 33.4 | 17.6 | 22 | 21.6 | 49 | 0 | 66.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-29 | 18 | 59 | 32.9 | 16.4 | 21 | 21.4 | 49.3 | 0 | 67.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-30 | 30 | 153 | 33.2 | 13 | 17 | 17.6 | 42.1 | 0 | 65.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-31 | 44 | 203 | 34.1 | 17 | 15 | 11.6 | 32.8 | 0 | 50 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2023-09-01 | 33 | 280 | 33.5 | 16 | 14 | 16 | 39.2 | 0 | 66 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-09-02 | 26 | 137 | 33.1 | 13.8 | 17 | 12.8 | 32.8 | 0 | 59.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-09-03 | 2 | 9 | 32.6 | 16 | 18 | 10.2 | 22.3 | 0 | 41.5 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2023-09-04 | 1 | 1 | 33.3 | 16.2 | 23 | 11.3 | 27 | 0 | 41.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2023-09-05 | 0 | 0 | 34.4 | 16.7 | 20 | 11.8 | 30.6 | 0 | 45.6 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-09-06 | 0 | 0 | 34.3 | 17.5 | 17 | 10 | 24.1 | 0 | 39.4 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-09-07 | 0 | 0 | 35.3 | 17.7 | 18 | 9.2 | 28.1 | 0 | 37.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-09-08 | 0 | 0 | 35.8 | 18.6 | 19 | 15.3 | 36.4 | 0 | 48.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-09-09 | 0 | 0 | 35.6 | 22.3 | 16 | 25.8 | 56.2 | 0 | 89.4 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-10 | 0 | 0 | 35.9 | 22.6 | 22 | 24.1 | 51.1 | 0 | 79.2 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-11 | 0 | 0 | 35.4 | 21.6 | 16 | 24.2 | 51.1 | 0 | 79.9 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-12 | 0 | 0 | 34.1 | 18.8 | 19 | 19.2 | 44.6 | 0 | 71 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-13 | 0 | 0 | 33.5 | 20.8 | 21 | 24.5 | 52.2 | 0 | 74.9 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-14 | 0 | 0 | 33.5 | 17.4 | 19 | 19.7 | 43.2 | 0 | 65.2 | extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 9,690ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 20 Aug 2023 – 4 Sept 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- local government areas
- Started on
- 20 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 331
- in a single hotspot: 92 MW
- Danger at start
- 59
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 138MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
20 Aug4 Sept
4 Sept 2023
How it evolved, day by day
20 Aug
24 Aug
28 Aug
1 Sept
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
34°high
53km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,429 ha in 2016, 506 ha in 2017, 8,120 ha in 2018, 5,487 ha in 2019, 5,122 ha in 2020, 1,312 ha in 2021, 4,958 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,723 ha that had burned before.
- 6,399 ha Victoria Daly fire, April 2018 14,283 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,057 ha Victoria Daly fire, July 2016 21,777 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,498 ha Victoria Daly fire, June 2019 16,680 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,810 ha West Arnhem fire, May 2022 7,077 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 457 ha Victoria Daly fire, August 2020 5,417 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 360 ha Roper Gulf fire, August 2018 8,886 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 295 ha Roper Gulf fire, May 2022 6,790 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
-
7,667 ha reached on 23 Aug0.0 %
-
Roper Gulf where it started1,933 ha reached on 20 Aug0.0 %
-
57 ha reached on 4 Sept0.0 %
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 2025Built-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 Extreme FWI: 43 % of the area in Australia 60 days without rain: 8.2 % of the area in Australia
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Aug | 31.5 °C | 17 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 21 Aug | 31.8 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 22 Aug | 32.2 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 23 Aug | 32.8 °C | 21 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 24 Aug | 33.1 °C | 23 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 25 Aug | 33.1 °C | 19 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 70 |
| 26 Aug | 32.9 °C | 17 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 27 Aug | 32.7 °C | 22 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 28 Aug | 33.4 °C | 22 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 29 Aug | 32.9 °C | 21 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 30 Aug | 33.2 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 31 Aug | 34.1 °C | 15 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 1 Sept | 33.5 °C | 14 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 2 Sept | 33.1 °C | 17 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 3 Sept | 32.6 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 4 Sept | 33.3 °C | 23 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 5 Sept after | 34.4 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 6 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 7 Sept after | 35.3 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 8 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 9 Sept after | 35.6 °C | 16 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 89 |
| 10 Sept after | 35.9 °C | 22 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 11 Sept after | 35.4 °C | 16 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 12 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 19 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 13 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 21 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 14 Sept after | 33.5 °C | 19 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 13 Aug 2023
After · 11 Sept 2023
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 3 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.21
WHO 15
18 Aug22 Aug26 Aug30 Aug3 Sept
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 · 331Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 37,180 haVictoria Daly31 August 2024 · 24 days · 7 km away
- 21,777 haVictoria Daly14 July 2016 · 28 days · 9 km away
- 16,962 haWest Arnhem18 October 2023 · 19 days · 10 km away
- 16,680 haVictoria Daly6 June 2019 · 38 days · 12 km away
- 18,912 haRoper Gulf17 August 2023 · 42 days · 29 km away
- 26,409 haVictoria Daly20 June 2019 · 17 days · 30 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 20 August 2023 to 4 September 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2023 to 3 September 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,690 hectares (96.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Victoria Daly (7,667 ha, 0.0 %); Roper Gulf (1,933 ha, 0.0 %); West Arnhem (57 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 3 September 2023 → 4 September 2023.
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
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 20 August 2023 to 3 September 2023. 331 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.
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.