How many farm fires? Too cloudy to tell
NEW DELHI: Experts have raised doubts over the number of farm fires that are being detected by satellites in Punjab and Haryana over the past two days at least with many claiming that the number may actually be an understated because of cloud cover over northwest India.
“There was drastic reduction in the number of farm fires across Punjab and Haryana detected by satellites. On Sunday only 57 incidents were detected. The region was under dense cloud cover which could obscure farm fires,” said a statement issued by System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (Safar), a forecasting agency under the ministry of earth sciences, on Sunday.
Scientists from Safar said that data from at least two Indian satellites and two US satellites are used for monitoring and forecasting pollution from stubble burning.
Even though there were over 3,500 crop stubble fire locations in Punjab between October 23 and 30, there has been an ‘abnormal’ drop in such cases in the past two days.
As a result of this, the forecast made by Safar on contribution of farm fires (which is based on satellite data) has also dropped from 46% to 12%.
“If the cloud cover is thick then the cameras mounted on satellites may not get the accurate picture. They could give erroneous data,” said SN Tripathi, head of the civil engineering department at IIT Kanpur.
But ground reports suggest a different picture. There has been no let-up in farm fires incident in the state.
Onsundaythemonitoringsystem at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) recorded 2,856 active fire incidents making it the third highest recorded during the season.
According to Anil Sood, senior scientist of Punjab Remote Sensing Center, PAU, the number of paddy residue burning could be much higher, however, due to cloud cover in parts of Ludhiana and Jalandhar the stubble burning cases could not be recorded.
In Haryana even though there has been an overall reduction in the number of stubble burning cases compared to last year, member secretary, Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB), S Narayanan said that the number of stubble burning cases increased marginally from 4,341 on Saturday to about 4,396 on Sunday.
In statement issued on Sunday, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) said: “NOX concentrations have not increased much. This indicates the dominance of a source like agricultural residue burning which emits high PM2.5 emissions, but less NOX. Measurements also indicate increased CO levels, which are also indicate enhanced biomass burning activity.”
Post-diwali, a sudden spike in stubble burning has raised questions on the efficacy of a raft of steps taken by the Punjab government to curb the menace. As many as 17,672 farm fires — almost 80% of this season so far — have been recorded in last week.
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