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AU · Australia · –

West Arnhem fire, 12 October 2023 East Arnhem, West Arnhem

Out · last detection 22 Nov 2023, 15:28 UTC

The fire started on 12 October 2023 in West Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 43 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,311 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 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.

Compare with…

Suggestions: East Arnhem · 2016East Arnhem · 2018East Arnhem · 2026West Arnhem · 2025

Burnt area
7,311ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
43days
12 Oct 2023 – 23 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
12 Oct
2023
Heat detections
429
in a single hotspot: 97 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
88MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Oct23 Nov
22 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

12 Oct 2023 · 5 MW · 1 13 Oct 2023 · 1 MW · 1 15 Oct 2023 · 15 MW · 3 17 Oct 2023 · 7 MW · 1 19 Oct 2023 · 7 MW · 2 20 Oct 2023 · 10 MW · 2 21 Oct 2023 · 91 MW · 5 22 Oct 2023 · 42 MW · 5 23 Oct 2023 · 216 MW · 22 24 Oct 2023 · 213 MW · 26 25 Oct 2023 · 153 MW · 28 26 Oct 2023 · 468 MW · 27 27 Oct 2023 · 136 MW · 20 28 Oct 2023 · 312 MW · 28 29 Oct 2023 · 57 MW · 18 30 Oct 2023 · 123 MW · 10 31 Oct 2023 · 53 MW · 10 1 Nov 2023 · 47 MW · 6 2 Nov 2023 · 22 MW · 2 3 Nov 2023 · 22 MW · 4 4 Nov 2023 · 18 MW · 7 5 Nov 2023 · 34 MW · 8 6 Nov 2023 · 286 MW · 22 7 Nov 2023 · 86 MW · 12 8 Nov 2023 · 70 MW · 11 9 Nov 2023 · 51 MW · 12 10 Nov 2023 · 28 MW · 7 11 Nov 2023 · 52 MW · 9 12 Nov 2023 · 41 MW · 6 13 Nov 2023 · 11 MW · 4 14 Nov 2023 · 84 MW · 18 15 Nov 2023 · 54 MW · 8 16 Nov 2023 · 167 MW · 17 17 Nov 2023 · 126 MW · 13 18 Nov 2023 · 61 MW · 13 19 Nov 2023 · 17 MW · 5 20 Nov 2023 · 1 MW · 1 21 Nov 2023 · 98 MW · 20 22 Nov 2023 · 142 MW · 15
12 Oct 26 Oct 8 Nov 16 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high
46km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 24 Nov.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,376 ha in 2016, 2,107 ha in 2017, 4,952 ha in 2018, 6,440 ha in 2019, 2,407 ha in 2020, 5,257 ha in 2021, 1,475 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,329 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (73 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. East Arnhem
    6,493 ha reached on 22 Oct
    0.2 %
  2. West Arnhem where it started
    855 ha reached on 12 Oct
    0.0 %

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 2025
Built-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)
12 Oct 37.7 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Oct 36.9 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Oct 37.0 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
15 Oct 38.2 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
16 Oct 37.1 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Oct 37.4 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
18 Oct 38.2 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
19 Oct 37.5 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Oct 36.2 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Oct 35.8 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Oct 35.9 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Oct 37.5 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Oct 38.5 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Oct 38.7 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Oct 37.9 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Oct 37.2 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
28 Oct 38.0 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Oct 35.1 °C 42 % 35 km/h 1.6 mm Very high 45
30 Oct 35.4 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.5 mm High 34
31 Oct 36.8 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Nov 36.8 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Nov 37.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Nov 37.4 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Nov 35.8 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Nov 37.7 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
6 Nov 37.2 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
7 Nov 37.9 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Nov 36.6 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Nov 36.2 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 48
10 Nov 33.6 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Nov 36.1 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46
12 Nov 34.3 °C 40 % 37 km/h 5.9 mm Very high 38
13 Nov 36.8 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
14 Nov 35.0 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
15 Nov 37.0 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Nov 36.4 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Nov 37.1 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Nov 37.9 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Nov 36.5 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 50
20 Nov 36.0 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Nov 38.6 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Nov 38.6 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 50
23 Nov 36.3 °C 41 % 37 km/h 2.1 mm Very high 44
24 Nov after 35.2 °C 41 % 34 km/h 2.7 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 5 Oct 2023
After · 30 Nov 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 18 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 35 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak35 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1053 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
17 Oct25 Oct2 Nov10 Nov18 Nov
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 · 429Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the West Arnhem fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 October 2023 to 23 November 2023 (43 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 October 2023 to 22 November 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,311 hectares (73.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: East Arnhem (6,493 ha, 0.2 %); West Arnhem (855 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 46 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 22 November 2023 → 23 November 2023.
  2. Start date: 19 October 2023 → 12 October 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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 000.

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 19 October 2023 to 22 November 2023. 429 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology

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.