Imperial College London
Professor Sanjeev Gupta

ProfessorSanjeevGupta

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Earth Science & Engineering

Professor of Earth Science
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6527s.gupta

 
 
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Location

 

Royal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Sembhi:2020:1748-9326/aba714,
author = {Sembhi, H and Wooster, M and Zhang, T and Sharma, S and Singh, N and Agarwal, S and Boesch, H and Gupta, S and Misra, A and Tripathi, SN and Mor, S and Khaiwal, R},
doi = {1748-9326/aba714},
journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
pages = {1--13},
title = {Post-monsoon air quality degradation across Northern India: assessing the impact of policy-related shifts in timing and amount of crop residue burnt},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aba714},
volume = {15},
year = {2020}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - The past decade has seen episodes of increasingly severe air pollution across much of the highly populated Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), particularly during the post-monsoon season when crop residue burning (CRB) is most prevalent. Recent studies have suggested that a major, possibly dominant contributor to this air quality decline is that northwest (NW) Indian rice residue burning has shifted later into the post-monsoon season, as an unintended consequence of a 2009 groundwater preservation policy that delayed the sowing of irrigated rice paddy. Here we combine air quality modelling of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) over IGP cities, with meteorology, fire and smoke emissions data to directly test this hypothesis. Our analysis of satellite-derived agricultural fires shows that an approximate 10 d shift in the timing of NW India post-monsoon residue burning occurred since the introduction of the 2009 groundwater preservation policy. For the air quality crisis of 2016, we found that NW Indian CRB timing shifts made a small contribution to worsening air quality (3% over Delhi) during the post-monsoon season. However, if the same agricultural fires were further delayed, air quality in the CRB source region (i.e. Ludhiana) and for Delhi could have deteriorated by 30% and 4.4%, respectively. Simulations for other years highlight strong inter-annual variabilities in the impact of these timing shifts, with the magnitude and even direction of PM2.5 concentration changes strongly dependent on specific meteorological conditions. Overall we find post-monsoon IGP air quality to be far more sensitive to meteorology and the amount of residue burned in the fields of NW India than to the timing shifts in residue burning. Our study calls for immediate actions to provide farmers affordable and sustainable alternatives to residue burning to hasten its effective prohibition, which is paramount to reducing the intensity of post-monsoon IGP air pollution episodes.
AU  - Sembhi,H
AU  - Wooster,M
AU  - Zhang,T
AU  - Sharma,S
AU  - Singh,N
AU  - Agarwal,S
AU  - Boesch,H
AU  - Gupta,S
AU  - Misra,A
AU  - Tripathi,SN
AU  - Mor,S
AU  - Khaiwal,R
DO  - 1748-9326/aba714
EP  - 13
PY  - 2020///
SN  - 1748-9326
SP  - 1
TI  - Post-monsoon air quality degradation across Northern India: assessing the impact of policy-related shifts in timing and amount of crop residue burnt
T2  - Environmental Research Letters
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aba714
UR  - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aba714
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/83452
VL  - 15
ER  -
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