Winds push stubble smoke to Delhi

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 15

Stubble burning in the state, if allowed, will surely have a choking effect on Delhi residents in the days to come even while most paddy producing districts are too far from the national capital.

Haryana has denied any contribution to the deterioration of air quality in the national capital. But with air quality of Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad and Greater Noida already described as “poor” by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) with index value of 246, 297, 271 and 252, respectively, on October 15, any further smoke from the state’s fields will definitely turn the air to “very poor” and even “severe”.

As per figures of the state Agriculture Department, of the 12.87 lakh hectare (lh) paddy area in Haryana, Karnal has the maximum 1.72 lh followed by Kaithal 1.62 lh, Jind 1.3 lh, Kurukshetra 1.15 lh, Fatehabad 99,400 hectares (h), Ambala 81,000 h, Sirsa 72,200 h, Yamunanagar 70,300 h, Hisar 59,810 h, Bhiwani 22,450 h and Panchkula 8,230 h.

All these districts are located at a distance from 100 to 250 km from Delhi and count for more than 10 lh of the total paddy produced in the state.

On the other hand, Sonepat 94,500 h, Panipat 73,500 h, Jhajjar 39,000 h, Palwal 19,700 h, Faridabad 7,000 h, Gurugram 5,150 h, Mewat 4,600 h and Rewari 1,300 h — the districts that are located at less than 100 km from the national capital — count for less than 2.5 lakh MT of the total paddy.

Dr Mahabir Jaglan, professor of geography in Kurukshetra University, said that as the monsoon withdraws from northwest India, a north-westerly and westerly flow replaces the easterly stream of summer. This drives smoke eastwards towards NCR.

Further, low altitude (Delhi is 216m from the sea level, Gurugram 217, Faridabad 198 and Greater Noida 202m) also contributes towards making the NCR a gas chamber as the winters set in October every year.

Jaglan maintained that the increase in pollution in Delhi and NCR is primarily linked to temperature inversion during the onset of winter.

Explaining temperature inversion, Jaglan said that normally, the temperature of air is high along the surface and it decreases at the rate of 6.5°C per km going upward.

October onwards, night temperature fall faster than day temperature and slowly, a pool of cool air develops along the surface.

That means air temperature along the surface goes below the temperature of the air above and inversion of temperature sets in. This prevents the mixing up of lower air pollutants with the upper layers of air.

Maintaining that paddy stubble burning alone is not the reason for the air problems of Delhi and NCR, Jaglan said that stopping stubble burning could definitely save the situation from worsening.

“There is already a huge amount of pollutants released into the air by industry, vehicles, construction works and mining in NCR. The concentration of these pollutants becomes very high due to temperature inversion in October-November. This is further aggravated by stubble burning and fireworks around Diwali,” Jaglan added.