Delhi’s air quality to turn poor by mid-week, farm fires picking up

According to the Air Quality Early Warning System for Delhi, wind speed, which was around 14-20 kilometres in the Capital till Sunday afternoon, will start to dip and is expected to be around 10 kilometres per hour on Monday evening and night.

High wind speed facilitates the dispersion of accumulated pollutants. In the absence of winds of over 10 kilometres per hour, especially in post-monsoon months, pollutants get accumulated and push up the AQI.

By Tuesday, the forecast says, “The wind speed will gradually decrease, becoming less than 8 kmph from the southwest direction during the evening and night… a slight uptick is expected on Wednesday morning but the speed will dip again on Wednesday night.”

Delhi’s AQI on Sunday was 167, which is in the moderate category. It is expected to remain moderate on Monday and Tuesday as well even as the AQI may rise a little. It is then forecast to deteriorate to poor starting Wednesday.

The ventilation index, which indicates the conditions for pollutants to disperse, is set to decrease steadily over the coming week, expected to decrease from around 7,700 square meters (m2/s) on Sunday to 4,500 m2/s on Wednesday.

“The ventilation index lower than 6,000 m2/s with average wind speed less than 10 kmph is unfavourable for dispersion of pollutants,” the forecast states.

The region has also benefited from the delayed paddy harvest season so far. In most areas in Punjab and Haryana, fields are either still waterlogged or the crop is damp, pushing the harvest further by at least a week. Punjab recorded one of the most devastating floods in several decades this September.

Experts in the Punjab and Haryana agriculture and environment departments apprehend that the delay combined with losses because of damage sustained by crops will push farmers to abandon safe and suitable paddy stubble disposal and push them to set fire to their farms.

“Farmers are already reeling under losses. In such situations, especially when the window to prepare the fields for the wheat crop has been shortened further, most prefer to use the fastest method even if it is the worst,” said a senior official from the Punjab’s Agriculture department.

“We are carrying out the awareness exercise as well as possible but there is a lot of disappointment and devastation on the ground because of the heavy unseasonal rain. We are trying our best,” on official from the Haryana’s Environment department said.

As per the Indian Agricultural Research Institute’s (IARI) Consortium for Research on Agroecosystem Monitoring and Modeling from Space (CREAMS) Laboratory, between September 30 and October 8, not a single instance of farm fire was recorded from either Punjab or Haryana.

Uttar Pradesh, however, tells a different story. Of the 366 burning events recorded between September 15 and October 11, the higher (163) were from the state. This is followed by Punjab (116) and Haryana (11).

By October 11 last year, the fire count in Punjab was 533, in Haryana was 280 and in UP was 220. The numbers in both Punjab and Haryana are lowest since 2020, which is when IARI started keeping count.

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