Midway through the winter: Overview of Delhi-NCR air quality during October-November

This is the first analysis of the third edition of Urban Lab’s Air Quality Tracker Initiative which was started in 2020-21 winter to study the impact of pandemic lockdowns on Delhi’s air quality. [...] 1 Urban Lab - Centre for Science and Environment Analysis Highlights of the key findings The early phase of this winter (October-November) was the least polluted in last 8 years in Delhi: The average PM2.5 level across 37 functional CAAQMS stations of Delhi stood at 142 µg/m3 for months of October and November. [...] Source: CSE analysis Farm stubble fires this year are about half of the previous year: The total count of farm stubble fires reported this year from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi in months of October and November stood at 54,391 according to NASA’s VIIRS satellite and 11,824 according to NASA’s MODIS satellite (See Graph 5: Trend in farm stubble fire counts in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi during October-. [...] If the FRP (fire radiative power is measure of intensity of fire) is taken into account in addition to the number of fire, it becomes clear that not only the fires were lesser in count but also lesser in intensity compared to previous two years. [...] This October-November not only the quantity and intensity of farm stubble fires have been comparatively lower but also the meteorological conditions have been less conducive for the transport 5 Urban Lab - Centre for Science and Environment Analysis of the smoke.