Smoke from fires in Uttarakhand worsens Delhi’s air quality

At 279, Delhi’s air quality was in the “poor” category overall on Tuesday, which according to the Central Pollution Control Board’s Sameer app means “breathing discomfort to most people on prolonged exposure.”

Published on: Apr 7, 2021, 01:52:34 IST

By Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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The Capital’s air quality index (AQI) has moved from moderate to poor to very poor over the past four days, the result of raging forest fires from Uttarakhand (and to a lesser extent, Himachal Pradesh) and winds blowing in from the northern state that has lost around 200 acres of forest to fires in the past few days.

It isn’t just Delhi, several cities in the northern plains are facing the same problem. (PTI file photo)

At 279, Delhi’s air quality was in the “poor” category overall on Tuesday, which according to the Central Pollution Control Board’s Sameer app means “breathing discomfort to most people on prolonged exposure.”

“Delhi’s air quality is on the poor zone as suddenly the dispersal of pollutants has gone down and pollutant load has increased because of many reasons and forest fires is probably one of them,” said Anumita Roy Choudhary, an air quality expert with Centre for Science and Environment.

It isn’t just Delhi, several cities in the northern plains are facing the same problem. For example, Sharanpur in Uttar Pradesh recorded AQI of 331 on Tuesday and Yamunanagar in Haryana AQI of 289. And some areas in the foothills of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh witnessed haze like conditions on Tuesday.

Uttarakhand has reported close to 100 forest fires in the last 48 hours and close to 250 in the past week. The intensity of forest fires in Himachal is lower, with close to 60 forest fires reported in the last 24 hours.

Most of the forest fires are in lower hills, which have pine tree forests that shed highly immflamable needles in this season. As there is no mechanism to collect the needles, a spark can cause fire, said Himachal’s forest minister Rakesh Pathania.

What has further contributed to forest fires is the dry hot weather. In the month of March and in first week of April, there was 79% rain deficiency in Uttarakhand and 65% in Himachal Pradesh, according to the India Meteorological Department.

A CPCB official, who asked not to be named, said that till the last week of March the wind direction was taking the smoke from forest fires towards the north, thereby not contributing much to the air pollution levels in the plains.

According to an Uttarakhand pollution control board official, there has been an increase in pollution levels in even within the state because of the forest fires. “We will be able to provide the data on the increase after few days as raw data was being analysed,” the official said.

“There are some forest fires in Uttarakhand, but air quality hasn’t declined in NW India only because of that. Winds are northwesterly here. Air quality is in poor category mainly because of dust and lack of moisture. It will improve later today because a western disturbance is expected to bring rain,” said VK Soni, scientist in IMD’s air quality division.

(With inputs from Jayashree Nandi)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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