This story is from October 30, 2020

Delhi: Farm fires hit season’s peak, share in PM2.5 rises to 36%

The contribution of stubble burning to Delhi’s air increased from 18% on Wednesday to 36% on Thursday — the highest this season, stated System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), the forecasting body under Union ministry of earth sciences.
Delhi: Farm fires hit season’s peak, share in PM2.5 rises to 36%
At 2,912, the season’s highest single-day fire count in the neighbouring states was also recorded on Wednesday (PTI photo)
NEW DELHI: The contribution of stubble burning to Delhi’s air increased from 18% on Wednesday to 36% on Thursday — the highest this season, stated System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), the forecasting body under Union ministry of earth sciences.
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At 2,912, the season’s highest single-day fire count in the neighbouring states was also recorded on Wednesday.
It exceeded the number of farm fires reported in October last year, as SAFAR data showed that over 2,700 such incidents were recorded in a single day in the neighbouring states on October 26, 2019. However, farm fires were at its peak in November last year, when over 5,000 incidents were reported in a day.
According to experts, the share of stubble burning to Delhi’s PM2.5 has suddenly gone up due to the increase in the number of farm fires and extremely calm wind impacting the dispersion of pollutants.
Kuldeep Srivastava, scientist, India Meteorological Department, and head, Regional Weather Forecasting Centre, said, “The calm wind speed has been prevailing over Delhi at night for the past few days. However, the average wind speed on Thursday was below 5kmph, which severely affected the dispersion of pollutants.”
L S Kurinji, research analyst, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), told TOI that, “Surface winds in Punjab were relatively higher (8-12kmph) on Wednesday, favouring the downwind transport of smoke. In addition, Delhi saw calm surface wind with low nighttime mixing height resulting in low ventilation on Wednesday. This hindered the dispersion of locally generated pollution. These factors combined with the increased share of farm fires caused a spike in Delhi’s PM 2.5 levels on Thursday.”

SAFAR’s bulletin on Thursday said that stagnant wind-related non-dispersion of local pollution combined with increased magnitude of external intrusion could be major factors for the increase in PM2.5 levels in the next 24 hours.
According to CEEW, which analysed the data from satellite images, from September 1-October 28 this year, 21,670 and 2,895 farm fires were observed in Punjab and Haryana, respectively.
“Earlier this season, fires were predominantly observed in districts such as Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Firozpur and Fazilka in Punjab. Over the past few days, fires have progressed over other Punjab districts, including Sangrur, Patiala, Gurdaspur, Kapurthala, Faridkot, and Bhatinda. In Haryana, fires were mostly seen over districts such as Karnal, Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Ambala and Fatehabad,” said Kurinji.
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