Weather, green-cracker push provide small mercy
NEW DELHI: On Monday, as Delhi woke up after a night of Diwali festivities, the air was a little less hazy than previous years.
Weather experts and environmentalists said that this time several factors worked for Delhi, including “green crackers”, albeit in limited supply, and favourable weather conditions. Strict and early action by government agencies also helped.
HT took a look at what helped Delhi this year.
PRE-EMPTIVE ACTION
The Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority [EPCA] enforced “severe” category measures under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), such as mechanised cleaning of roads and regular sprinkling of water, from October 15 itself.
VK Shukla, in-charge of air quality management at the CPCB, said that increased ground level enforcement played a critical role. “All government agencies were on their toes. CPCB itself had 46 teams in Delhi and NCR that checked for any violations. Our teams were passing on real-time information on violations to all agencies for prompt action,” said Shukla.
Shutting the Badarpur power plant in Delhi, completion of the eastern and western peripheral expressways for vehicles not destined for Delhi, ban on PET coke as industrial fuel, and the introduction of BS-VI fuel have also made a big difference.
GREEN CRACKERS
This time, the limited availability of the newly introduced “green crackers” became a major reason behind fewer crackers being burnt in Delhi. These crackers are known to have nearly 30% lower emissions compared to the traditional varieties, which were banned by the Supreme Court.
“The significant drop of about 30% in PM 2.5 (fine particulate matter with diameter less than 2.5 micrometres), SO2 (sulphur dioxide) and CO (carbon monoxide) all point towards the findings that people have burnt much less fire crackers this year,” a statement released by Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) read on Monday.
The less polluting variant of firecrackers only had two varieties, anar (flowerpot) and phuljhari (sparklers).
Awareness campaigns, especially targeting children, also reduced cracker bursting. Experts, however, said that trends on Sunday night show that the residents in Delhi-ncr did not hesitate in burning crackers.
“People know the effects of burning crackers but we need to keep reminding them. From a very clean afternoon, the change to severe pollution levels after 10pm was drastic. There was a 10-fold jump in PM 2.5 concentrations between 5pm and 1am due to bursting of firecrackers,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director (research and advocacy), Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).
WEATHER CONDITIONS
In 2018, even till two days after the festival, the air quality continued to deteriorate eventually reaching the ‘severe’ category. Scientists at the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said that Diwali being on a later date last year (November 7) was a disadvantage. This time, early Diwali and comparatively higher wind speeds in the week leading to the festival did good for the city.
Kuldeep Srivastava, head of the regional weather forecasting centre (RWFC), IMD, said, “Till Sunday (Diwali day) afternoon, the wind speed was around 16 kmph, but it calmed by the night and stayed this way till Monday morning,” said Srivastava.
Roychowdhury said that it was important to note that the overall pollution levels in Delhi-ncr are lower since September 15.
“This has prevented the build-up of pollution to ‘very poor’ and ‘severe’ levels before Diwali and has also enabled quicker dissipation of pollution post-diwali (until 4 pm on Monday),” she said.