Burned area
satellite only10,800ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 21 Aug 2023 – 1 Sept 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Roper Gulf fire, 21 August 2023 Roper Gulf
Out · last detection 1 Sept 2023, 04:58 UTC
The fire started on 21 August 2023 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,800 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1072th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 2853 with a page). Number 513 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches 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 only12days
21 Aug 2023 to 1 Sept 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 1 Sept 2023, 04:58 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 only21 Aug 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 21 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 only336
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 102 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 21 Aug 2023 – 1 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 only1,206MW
Total radiative power on 27 August 2023; hotspots that day: 82.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 27 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
model48.5FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 44.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 21 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
model34.7°C · 8% RH
High of 34.7 °C and minimum humidity of 8% on 31 August 2023; gusts of 54 km/h on 26 August 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 21 Aug 2023 – 1 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 GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 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
- 10,800 ha
- Dates
- 21 Aug 2023 – 1 Sept 2023
- Name
- Roper Gulf
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/roper-gulf-2023-08-5?v=2026-10-24A 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-2023-08-5.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-08-16 | 0 | 0 | 33.7 | 14.1 | 20 | 19.1 | 34.2 | 0 | 48.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-08-17 | 0 | 0 | 34.2 | 16.7 | 19 | 18.5 | 33.8 | 0 | 48.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-08-18 | 0 | 0 | 34.1 | 17.6 | 22 | 16.6 | 31.7 | 0 | 46.3 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2023-08-19 | 0 | 0 | 30.9 | 18.2 | 13 | 26.5 | 50.8 | 0 | 60.9 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-08-20 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 13.7 | 14 | 23.1 | 44.3 | 0 | 56.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-08-21 | 6 | 5 | 32.2 | 12.5 | 15 | 18 | 32.4 | 0 | 50.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-22 | 42 | 150 | 32.7 | 12.9 | 17 | 18 | 35.6 | 0 | 51 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-23 | 38 | 218 | 33.5 | 13.9 | 12 | 20.9 | 43.2 | 0 | 57 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-24 | 18 | 128 | 33.9 | 15.1 | 17 | 24.5 | 46.8 | 0 | 62.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-25 | 14 | 57 | 33.6 | 16.3 | 15 | 27.8 | 52.2 | 0 | 67.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-26 | 23 | 137 | 32.7 | 16.7 | 24 | 28.3 | 54.4 | 0 | 62.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-27 | 82 | 1,206 | 32.8 | 15.4 | 23 | 25.1 | 47.9 | 0 | 58.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-28 | 53 | 473 | 33.4 | 14.2 | 16 | 22.3 | 44.3 | 0 | 54.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-29 | 15 | 366 | 34.2 | 14 | 12 | 16.8 | 37.8 | 0 | 52.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-30 | 18 | 55 | 34.4 | 15.7 | 15 | 14.6 | 31.3 | 0 | 50.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-08-31 | 18 | 84 | 34.7 | 13.5 | 8 | 21.3 | 43.2 | 0 | 63.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-09-01 | 9 | 134 | 32.9 | 14.4 | 13 | 19.4 | 39.2 | 0 | 60.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2023-09-02 | 0 | 0 | 32.7 | 13.5 | 12 | 15.9 | 35.6 | 0 | 56.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-03 | 0 | 0 | 33.7 | 12.3 | 13 | 21.1 | 37.1 | 0 | 63.6 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-04 | 0 | 0 | 34.1 | 16.4 | 18 | 24 | 42.5 | 0 | 63.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-05 | 0 | 0 | 35.4 | 17.7 | 18 | 23.1 | 42.1 | 0 | 62.7 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-06 | 0 | 0 | 34.7 | 18.1 | 22 | 22.7 | 41 | 0 | 58.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-07 | 0 | 0 | 36.4 | 15.3 | 14 | 20 | 36.7 | 0 | 56.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-08 | 0 | 0 | 36.6 | 16.1 | 17 | 22.1 | 41 | 0 | 59.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-09 | 0 | 0 | 35.5 | 22 | 16 | 26.6 | 49.7 | 0 | 66.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-10 | 0 | 0 | 36.3 | 22.8 | 15 | 25.7 | 50 | 0 | 65 | extremo | 0 |
| 2023-09-11 | 0 | 0 | 35.9 | 19.9 | 9 | 24.7 | 46.4 | 0 | 68.2 | 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
- 10,800ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 21 Aug 2023 – 1 Sept 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 21 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 336
- in a single hotspot: 102 MW
- Danger at start
- 48
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 251MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
21 Aug1 Sept
1 Sept 2023
How it evolved, day by day
21 Aug
24 Aug
27 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
54km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity
It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,695 ha in 2017, 1,497 ha in 2020, 2,171 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,953 ha that had burned before.
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 started10,923 ha reached on 21 Aug0.1 %
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 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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Aug | 33.7 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 17 Aug | 34.2 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Aug | 34.1 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 19 Aug | 30.9 °C | 13 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 20 Aug | 31.0 °C | 14 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 21 Aug | 32.2 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 22 Aug | 32.7 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 23 Aug | 33.5 °C | 12 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 24 Aug | 33.9 °C | 17 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 25 Aug | 33.6 °C | 15 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 26 Aug | 32.7 °C | 24 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 27 Aug | 32.8 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 28 Aug | 33.4 °C | 16 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 29 Aug | 34.2 °C | 12 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 30 Aug | 34.4 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 31 Aug | 34.7 °C | 8 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 1 Sept | 32.9 °C | 13 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 2 Sept after | 32.7 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 3 Sept after | 33.7 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 4 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 5 Sept after | 35.4 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 6 Sept after | 34.7 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 7 Sept after | 36.4 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 8 Sept after | 36.6 °C | 17 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 9 Sept after | 35.5 °C | 16 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 10 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 15 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 11 Sept after | 35.9 °C | 9 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 48.5, a minimum humidity of 15% and 44 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 17.
FWI at the start
48.5
Minimum humidity
15 %
Days without rain
44
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Roper Gulf fire, 21 August 2023
10,800 ha
12 days
FWI 48.5
Min. humidity 15 %
Roper Gulf fire, July 2017
11,812 ha
9 days
FWI 49.6
Min. humidity 14 %
12 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Roper Gulf fire, June 2025
6,590 ha
5 days
FWI 45.9
Min. humidity 15 %
206 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Roper Gulf fire, August 2017
11,474 ha
9 days
FWI 46.1
Min. humidity 15 %
57 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Roper Gulf fire, July 2020
7,812 ha
18 days
FWI 48.3
Min. humidity 20 %
73 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Roper Gulf fire, August 2021
5,684 ha
17 days
FWI 46.8
Min. humidity 14 %
117 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 11 days
- median duration
- 7,812 ha
- median area
- 47 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- 9.1 mm
- rain at the end (median; 2 of 17 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (10,800 ha against a median of 7,812 ha) and lasted 12 days, against 11 days.
In 15 of 17, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 9.1 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
54km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 1 Sept, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 2 of 17, with a median of 9.1 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 14 Aug 2023
After · 8 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 30 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1059 µg/m³
Optical depth0.28
WHO 15
19 Aug23 Aug27 Aug31 Aug4 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 · 336Every 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
- 35,398 haRoper Gulf31 August 2023 · 27 days · 28 km away
- 21,393 haRoper Gulf8 October 2023 · 12 days · 30 km away
- 42,222 haRoper Gulf27 September 2024 · 18 days · 32 km away
- 91,141 haRoper Gulf15 July 2026 · 32 days · 35 km away
- 56,092 haRoper Gulf28 October 2022 · 13 days · 40 km away
- 42,177 haRoper Gulf24 August 2026 · 21 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Roper Gulf fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 August 2023 and 1 September 2023: 12 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 10,800 hectares (108.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Roper Gulf (10,923 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 17. Their median duration was 11 days and their median area 7,812 ha; 47 % went past 10,000 ha. In 15 of 17, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 9.1 mm.
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 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 336 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 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.