Roper Gulf fire, 8 December 2025 Roper Gulf
The fire started on 8 December 2025 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,632 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2064th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 668 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,632ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 8 Dec 2025 – 13 Dec 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 8 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 155
- in a single hotspot: 106 MW
- Danger at start
- 14
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 420MW
- 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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.6 mm on 18 Dec.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,610 ha in 2016, 552 ha in 2017, 3,610 ha in 2018, 11 ha in 2020, 6,943 ha in 2021, 707 ha in 2023, 479 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,962 ha that had burned before.
- 5,747 ha Roper Gulf fire, December 2021 38,124 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,165 ha Roper Gulf fire, October 2018 13,379 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,092 ha Roper Gulf fire, May 2018 8,802 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 325 ha Roper Gulf fire, August 2017 8,370 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 started7,714 ha reached on 9 Dec0.0 %
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 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Dec | 33.1 °C | 51 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 9 Dec | 31.1 °C | 67 % | 36 km/h | 0.6 mm | Low 10 |
| 10 Dec | 31.9 °C | 56 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 11 Dec | 32.1 °C | 57 % | 33 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 12 Dec | 31.5 °C | 59 % | 34 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 13 Dec | 31.6 °C | 64 % | 36 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 9 |
| 14 Dec after | 32.9 °C | 54 % | 36 km/h | 0.6 mm | Low 11 |
| 15 Dec after | 33.9 °C | 54 % | 31 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 16 Dec after | 30.6 °C | 72 % | 32 km/h | 4.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 17 Dec after | 30.2 °C | 72 % | 35 km/h | 2.4 mm | Very low 2 |
| 18 Dec after | 29.4 °C | 76 % | 38 km/h | 14.6 mm | Very low 0 |
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 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 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 · 155Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 38,124 haRoper Gulf4 December 2021 · 16 days · 1 km away
- 24,701 haRoper Gulf20 May 2023 · 21 days · 27 km away
- 77,341 haRoper Gulf25 October 2020 · 40 days · 28 km away
- 66,989 haRoper Gulf9 December 2019 · 25 days · 32 km away
- 30,457 haRoper Gulf29 October 2025 · 18 days · 33 km away
- 45,392 haRoper Gulf1 October 2017 · 16 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Roper Gulf fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 December 2025 and 13 December 2025: 6 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 7,632 hectares (76.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Roper Gulf (7,714 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 51 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
- 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.
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. 155 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.