Owing to the steep rise in stubble burning in the last two days, air quality in Delhi slipped to “very poor” category on Saturday according to authorities, stubble burning is contributing to air pollution by 14 percent currently.
Delhi’s AQI slipped to a very poor category with PM 2.5 as the lead pollutant according to the Ministry of Earth Sciences’ forecast body SAFAR.
“Favourable meteorological conditions lead to intrusion of stubble burning related air mass. With 1,572 effective fire counts as per SAFAR harmonised methodology which includes data of two ISRO satellites, the stubble burning contribution in Delhi’s air has suddenly increased to 14 per cent.
Fire counts are gradually increasing and wind direction is favourable and coming from the north-west direction at transport level [900 mb] for intrusion,” SAFAR said.
The active fire events due to rice residue burning were monitored using satellite remote sensing, following the new Standard Protocol for Estimation of Crop Residue Burning Fire Events using Satellite Data.
However, expected heavy rainfall today will most probably bring some improvement in the air quality, changing it from “very poor” to “poor” category.
According to the data from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), as many as 1,948 farm fires were recorded in the last two days – October 15 and 16- compared to 1,795 incidents that occurred in an entire month till October 14.
1,089 farm fires were recorded in Punjab alone, along with 539 fires in Haryana had, 270 incidents in Uttar Pradesh, 10 fires in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh recording 40 such incidents.
Punjab and Haryana especially attract attention every year for stubble burning during the paddy harvesting season in October and November.
Farmers set their fields on fire to quickly clear off the crop residue before cultivating wheat and potato. It is one of the main reasons for the alarming spike in pollution in Delhi-NCR which is further aggravated by the celebrations practiced during the forthcoming festive season.