Climate Adaptation
India’s Clean Air Days May Be Numbered as Farmers Clear Fields
- Lockdowns to fight Covid-19 halted polluting economic activity
- Seasonal crop fires have started in northern state of Punjab
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India’s recent clean air and blue skies, an unintended consequence of Covid-19 lockdowns, may soon be ending as seasonal crop fires start, one of the main culprits behind the nation’s chronic smog.
Pollution across Indian cities, which suffer some of the world’s worst air, is compounded every winter by stubble burning after the monsoon-season crop harvest. That might have already started, with fires and smoke in parts of northern Punjab state showing up in images and data from U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.