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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

03/11/23 09:38 AM IST

Smoke, dust and a dash of fumes

In News
  • For the first time this season, Delhi’s air quality plummeted to hit the ‘severe’ category recently.
Factors behind air quality
  • A cocktail of factors — low wind speed and intrusion of smoke from stubble burning — added to the impact of local emissions.
  • This resulted in the air quality consistently worsening through the day from an average of 351 at 10 am to touch 402 at 5 pm. By 9 pm, it had deteriorated further to 418.
  • The contribution of stubble burning is high, with a high fire count.
  • Weather conditions have also become favourable for accumulation of pollutants.
  • Low visibility is on account of intrusion of particles.
  • Winds are calm even at a height of half a kilometre from the ground, and that is resulting in the suspension of particles and low visibility.
  • From around this time of the year, wind direction changes and becomes north-northwest.
  • The temperature is not that low, but major factors now are transport level wind direction and speed that is bringing pollutants into Delhi — stubble-related emissions travel at half a km to one km above the surface.
  • Wind speed of 10-12 kmph can help disperse pollutants.
  • But when the wind direction is from opposite sides, that can also result in pollutants not dispersing.
Stubble burning
  • According to data from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, while Punjab saw 1,921 instances of crop residue burning  — the fourth day in a row that the count was over 1,000.
  • Data from SAFAR shows that last year, the daily peak contribution of stubble burning to PM 2.5 levels in Delhi was 34% on November 3, while it was 48% in 2021, 42% in 2020, and 44% in 2019.
Source- Indian Express

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