Weak monsoon may cause spike in air pollution levels this year

The weather office’s forecast of a weak monsoon this year could lead to a spike in air pollution in many Indian cities, including Delhi and its suburbs, for a second straight year, says a state weather analysis institute.

Updated on: Apr 23, 2015, 22:00:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The weather office’s forecast of a weak monsoon this year could lead to a spike in air pollution in many Indian cities, including Delhi and its suburbs, for a second straight year, says a state weather analysis institute.

Pollution in Delhi jumped about 20% last year to the highest levels since 2010 partly because of patchy rains during the July-September monsoon season, adding to the woes of residents already choking from the city’s toxic air because of noxious fumes belched out by vehicles.

“The wash down impact on emissions was low because of lesser rainfall. The extension of dry weather contributed to higher pollution levels,” said Gufran Beig of the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), which monitors air quality at 10 locations in Delhi.

The institute has been monitoring air pollution since 2010 under a programme called System for Air Quality Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) and found a link between a weak monsoon and a rise in air pollution levels.

It found that the overall level of minute particles called particulate matter (PM) 2.5 leapt to 115 Gegagrams (Gg) in 2014 from 94.26 Gg in 2010. During the monsoon months last year the level was around 100 Gg, almost one-third more than the previous year’s annual average during the three months.

The phenomenon is not limited to Delhi, which is one of the world’s most polluted cities where doctors say residents develop smokers’ lungs by the age of 35 without ever having smoked because of the city’s toxic air.

A Central Pollution Control Board official said many cities in west and north-west India such as Jaipur, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Agra and Chandigarh have also witnessed higher air pollution levels because of less rainfall during the monsoon months.

But the impact of air pollution on monsoon rains has not been conclusively established. “It is an area of research and debate. But a poor monsoon resulting in a spike in air pollution can happen in many cities, including Delhi," the CPCB official said.

Other weather scientists have also found a co-relation between monsoon rains and pollution levels.

A 2011 University of Edinburgh study on monsoon data for over 50 years showed higher air pollution-linked human activity had led to drier monsoon, affecting the lives of billions of people in South Asia.

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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