India presently makes use of knowledge from NASA satellites.
New Delhi:
Centre plans to clamp down on polluting farm fires by measuring the areas burnt as a substitute of stay blazes, after studies that farmers had been burning paddy waste or stubble at instances when satellites weren’t passing overhead.
India presently makes use of knowledge from NASA satellites that go twice a day over Punjab and Haryana to observe farm fires, that are a serious contributor to the smog that envelopes the nationwide capital area (NCR) every winter.
The Commission for Air Quality Management, a authorities physique accountable for air high quality within the NCR, stated on Friday that India’s house company had been requested in January to develop a system to review burnt areas to depend farm fires.
“That protocol has truly been developed and is presently being examined,” Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati informed the Supreme Court after an adviser to the court docket stated on Monday that the present system counted fires over a restricted time.
Some specialists suspect that farmers have, over time, change into conscious of the surveillance interval and shifted the time of burning their crop waste to evade the NASA satellites, due to which whereas counts had been decrease this 12 months, air pollution ranges weren’t.
The authorities stated on Friday that knowledge from stationary satellites was “sub-optimal” and never “actionable”, dismissing an earlier course from the court docket to make use of them as a substitute.
Delhi has been battling hazardous air this month, with the air high quality index (AQI) touching a peak of 494 on a scale of 500 on Monday, when farm fires additionally recorded a excessive of two,893, prompting the federal government to limit automobile motion and development and shift faculties to on-line educating.
India considers an AQI of 0-50 ‘good’, and above 400 ‘extreme’, which poses a danger to wholesome individuals and “severely impacts” these with current illnesses.
Delhi recorded a ‘very poor’ AQI of 374 on Friday, authorities stated, and the Ministry of Earth Sciences forecast it will stay in the identical class (300-400) via this week.
Other nations in South Asia additionally battle poisonous air yearly as chilly air traps mud, smoke, and emissions, and a few research say rising air air pollution can lower an individual’s life expectancy within the area by greater than 5 years.
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