Stubble fire count in north India at five-year high, Nasa satellite data shows

With the farm fire season in the northern plains at its close, this year is set to be the worst year in terms of the total number of fires recorded in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in the last five years, National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa) satellite data analysed by an environmental think-tank shows.

The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), which looked at stubble burning data from the three states between October 1 and November 28 using the VIIRS satellite, found that there have been 90,984 fires cumulatively in the three states this year, almost 7,000 more than last year’s 84,525.

To be sure, a bulk of these fires came from Punjab.

Punjab has so far recorded 76,427 fires, up from last year’s figure of 74,183 and behind only 2016 (86,379). Similarly, Haryana’s count of 9,869 fires is significantly up from last year’s count of 5,335 fires, but behind 2016 (13,130).

The count is the highest in the three states since 2016, which saw 108,298 fires, CEEW data showed. In comparison, the figure was around 54,000 in 2019, showing the efforts put in to curb stubble burning have largely not yielded any major results.

Data shows while the count in Uttar Pradesh this year (4,695) has largely been consistent with last year’s figure (4,701), Punjab and Haryana have fared worse than they did in 2020.

Adeel Khan, research analyst at CEEW says Firozpur in Punjab saw the most stubble fires across the state, recording around 9,000 blazes, followed by Sangrur, Bathinda and Moga.

“Ludhiana [in Punjab] also reported a marked rise in farm fires this year, touching 5,400, compared to around 3,900 in last year. In Haryana, Fatehabad reported a maximum of around 2,000 fires followed by Kaithal, Jind and Karnal districts. Shahjahanpur in UP reported a maximum of 470 farm fires, compared to 170 last year,” said Khan.

Experts however also said that crop stubble fires are almost over in Punjab and Haryana, Uttar Pradesh was still recording a decent number.

Data for November 28, released by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), showed that Punjab logged five fires, Haryana nine, while UP recorded 241.

“We are still recording over 100 fires per day in Madhya Pradesh and over 200 fires per day in Uttar Pradesh,” Pawan Gupta, a research scientist at the Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research (GESTAR) at Nasa said.

According to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (Safar), the impact from stubble burning in Delhi’s air is also now negligible, with stubble burning contributing at an average of 4% to Delhi’s air between November 23 and 27. During this period, local sources contributed 78 percent to the total pollution load.