Farm fire impact on Delhi pollution drops as paddy burning season ends

Data from the Decision Support System showed a 2.66% contribution from stubble burning on Saturday. Figures for Friday were unavailable, while Thursday saw a 2.88% share. Forecasts indicate the contribution will remain below 3% on Monday and Tuesday.

Farm fire counts in Punjab and Haryana have fallen to single digits, sharply reducing their contribution to Delhi’s PM 2.5 levels. The share of emissions from stubble burning, which reached a single-day peak of 22.4 percent on November 12, dipped to 2.66 percent on November 22. With minimal fires detected on Sunday, the contribution is expected to stay below 5%, much lower than in recent years.

This year’s peak is not only lower but also arrived later than previous years (File photo)

Data from the Decision Support System showed a 2.66% contribution from stubble burning on Saturday. Figures for Friday were unavailable, while Thursday saw a 2.88% share. Forecasts indicate the contribution will remain below 3% on Monday and Tuesday.

This year’s peak is not only lower but also arrived later than previous years. The single-day peak stood at 35.1% on November 1 last year. It was 35% on November 3 in both 2023 and 2022. In 2021, the peak was 48% on November 6.

Experts attributed a delayed peak this year to delayed harvesting – due to floods in Punjab, adding that the decline in the overall count and contribution is likely due to both in-situ and ex-situ efforts in Punjab and Haryana. They said other year-round pollution sources would now dominate Delhi’s air quality. “This year, sources within NCR other than stubble burning were already playing a key role, but we can expect the impact of stubble burning to become negligible in the coming days and the contribution of other NCR sources both within and outside Delhi to be impacting the AQI,” said Sunil Dahiya, founder and analyst at the think-tank Envirocatalysts. He added that a lower overall contribution from stubble burning may have reduced the severity of Delhi’s pollution episodes.

Farm fire data from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute showed Punjab recorded three fires on Sunday and nine on Saturday. Haryana saw one fire on Sunday and 13 on Saturday. Between September 15 and November 23, Punjab logged 5,088 fires compared to 10,605 last year. Haryana recorded 617 fires, down from 1,263 in the same period last year. The institute tracks fires between September 15 and November 30, the standard paddy residue burning window.

Single-day peaks have also dropped. Punjab’s highest this year was 442 fires on November 1, compared to 1,251 on November 18 last year. Haryana’s peak was 72 fires on November 11, against 98 on October 12 last year.