Vastly bigger than the Black Summer: 84 million hectares of northern Australia burned in 2023

• Fires burned across an area eight times as big as the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires that tore through 10 million hectares in southeast Australia.
• My research shows the 2023 fires burned more than 84 million hectares of desert and savannah in northern Australia.
• In just a few weeks of September and October, more than 18 million hectares burned across the Barkly, Tanami and Great Sandy Deserts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Why did this happen?

• When it dries out, grass becomes fuel for fires.
• For example, you can see the pattern of more fire following wet years repeating at periodic intervals over the past 20 years of fire in the Northern Territory.
• In this way, La Niña is the major driver of these massive fires in the desert.
• In the NT alone, more than 55 million hectares burned in 2011, compared with 43 million in 2023.

How can fires be managed?

• The sophisticated use of fire in Australia’s highly flammable tropical savannas has been recognised as the world’s best wildfire management system.
• It also hinders the spread of fire because areas subject to more recent fire have insufficient fuel to carry new fires for many years.

• Even though large fires still ripped through these deserts in 2023, by mapping the fuel reduction fires and overlaying the spread of subsequent wildfires, we can see the 2023 fires were limited by previous burns.
• For example, the fire spread animation below shows fires moving through a complex mosaic comprising fuel of different ages.
• Read more:
  Invasive grasses are worsening bushfires across Australia's drylands

  The fires of greatest concern to government agencies were the Barkly fires that threatened the town of Tennant Creek.

• Read more:
  Indigenous rangers are burning the desert the right way – to stop the wrong kind of intense fires from raging

Preparing for the future

• Desert fire management is still under-resourced and poorly understood.
• Read more:
  Our planet is burning in unexpected ways - here’s how we can protect people and nature

Rohan Fisher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.