How many farm fires? Experts say it is too cloudy to figure out

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.

On Sunday the monitoring sys

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Contribution (in%) 0 24-Oct

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AQI on

Nov 6, 2016

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AQI at 4pm

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Number of flights delayed on Nov 3

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01-Nov

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Number of flights cancelled