Pollution Fest

North India's annual smoke festival,
tracked from space.

Every October, north India sets its fields on fire and its governments set up a committee. We use NASA satellites to count the fires so you don't have to take anyone's word for it. What the smoke does · Why the farmer isn't the villain · What Punjab could grow · Explore the fires · Glossary

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fire detections this kharif season
…and those are just the fires that showed up when the satellite was watching.
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in the last 24 hours of data
🏆 Golden Matchstick Award
–
most detections in the last 24 hours

Festival highlights: what you get, whether you bought a ticket or not 🎟️

From mid-October to late November, farm smoke rolls across the Indo-Gangetic plain, meets cold still air, and settles in for the season. Delhi's official AQI (CPCB 24-hour average) was 376 at 4 PM on Diwali, Sun 8 Nov 2026, and 344 at 4 PM on Mon 9 Nov, with 15 stations in the "severe" band. On Diwali night, PM2.5 readings at several monitoring stations conveniently went blank. Here's this year's programme.

Complimentary life-shortening

If Delhi's air met the WHO guideline, residents would live about 8.2 years longer. Haryana: 5.3 years. UP: 5 years. Year-round dirty air does this, and the festival is its loudest act.

AQLI 2025, EPIC Chicago (2023 data)

The headliner: stubble smoke

On the worst days, farm fires made up 38% of Delhi's PM2.5 in 2024 and 22% in 2025. Across November it averages less (20% in 2024, 7% in 2025), but it turns bad air into a public-health emergency overnight.

IITM Decision Support System, via CREA (Nov 2025 snapshot)

The encore nobody asked for

When the fires stop, Delhi's December smog often gets worse, thanks to its own vehicles, dust and industry. Stubble is the guest who gets blamed for the whole party, then leaves early while the party carries on.

CSE analysis, Dec 2025

Surprise holidays!

Schools go online. Construction stops. This year: a 15-day construction ban across NCR from 5 Nov, and half of office staff in Noida and Gurugram sent home. Construction workers get the holiday too. The pay is another matter.

Indian Express, Nov 2026

Roasted soil, served hot

Every tonne of straw burnt sends roughly 5.5 kg of nitrogen, 25 kg of potash, 1.2 kg of sulphur and ~400 kg of carbon up in smoke. Farmers then buy fertiliser to put it back. Truly a circular economy.

Govt. of Goa / Frontiers in Soil Science, 2025

Front-row seats: rural Punjab & Haryana

Delhi gets the headlines, but the villages next to the burning fields breathe it first and worst, with no smog towers and no TV debates. They're also where the matchstick gets lit, which tells you how little choice is involved.

 

The magic trick: make fires disappear without putting them out

Satellite fire counts are collapsing 📉

Detections from the same satellite (VIIRS on NOAA-20), 15 Sep to today's date, every year. Same satellite, same window, so it's a fair comparison.

…but the burnt fields didn't get the memo 🔥

Change from 2024 to 2025: fires officially counted vs land actually burnt (satellite burn scars). Source: iFOREST, via Indian Express, 12 Nov 2026.

Fires counted Area burnt

In Haryana, the fire count halved while the burnt area grew by a quarter. That's not a pollution fix. That's a scheduling fix.

Hide and seek, national championship edition

The satellites behind official fire counts circle the Earth on a fixed schedule. Over Punjab, the main ones pass over between noon and 3 PM, then come back at 1–3 AM.

Farmers worked this out. In 2024 the Supreme Court heard that farmers were allegedly being advised to burn after the satellites had gone. iFOREST found over 90% of large fires in 2024–25 burned after 3 PM. In 2025 an ISRO study confirmed that peak burning had shifted to late afternoon and evening.

So why does the chart below show any afternoon fires at all? Thank Aqua, a NASA satellite launched in 2002. In retirement its orbit is drifting later in the day, and it now limps over Punjab at around 3–4:30 PM. Our best eye on the evening is a 24-year-old satellite that's running late. 🛰️👴

When fires get spotted (IST)

Detections by hour for the interval selected below. The shaded band is when most large fires actually burn.

Who's watching from up there? 🛰️

Every satellite that can see a farm fire or its smoke over these six states, Indian and foreign, and whether this page uses it. Times are IST over Punjab: measured from our own data for the satellites we use, approximate for the rest. "Could use" means the data is public; most of it needs an account and some file wrangling.

The official count watches fewer satellites than we do. IARI's daily CREAMS bulletin, the source of the government's fire numbers, lists four satellites, but every fire event in its 12 Nov 2026 bulletin comes from just two: NOAA-20 and Aqua. NOAA-21, launched in 2022, isn't on its list. That's one reason our counts run higher than the official ones.

🔥 Fire spotters

SatelliteOver Punjab (IST)What it seesStatus here
NOAA-20 VIIRS
USA (NOAA/NASA)		12:50–2:40 PM, and 1–3 AMFires in 375 m pixels. The workhorse of the official count.Using via NASA FIRMS
NOAA-21 VIIRS
USA (NOAA/NASA)		12:50–2:30 PM, and 1–3 AMSame instrument as NOAA-20, about 50 minutes apart in the same orbit.Using via FIRMS
Suomi NPP VIIRS
USA (NASA/NOAA)		1–2:40 PMSame instrument again; the oldest of the three.Ended 2 Nov 2026, mid-season
Aqua MODIS
USA (NASA), launched 2002		3:30–4:30 PM, and drifting laterFires in 1 km pixels. Our only polar eye on the late afternoon, thanks to orbit drift.Using. NASA plans to start shutting it down in late 2026 or early 2027.
Terra MODIS
USA (NASA), launched 1999		About 9–10 AM and 8:30–9 PMFires in 1 km pixels, at hours when hardly anything burns: fewer than 40 detections in and around Punjab all season.Using. Same shutdown plan as Aqua.
INSAT-3DS, INSAT-3DR
India (ISRO), geostationary		Every 30 minutesA fire product, but in 4 km pixels, too coarse for most single fields: "existing geostationary satellites are unable to pick up smaller fires" (Shaastra, IIT Madras).Could use with a MOSDAC account
Meteosat-9 SEVIRI
Europe (EUMETSAT), geostationary		Every 15 minutesFires in 3 km pixels at best. ISRO's own 2025 study used Meteosat data to show peak burning moving to around 5 PM (Tribune).Could use via LSA SAF (registration)
GK-2A AMI
South Korea (KMA), geostationary		Every 10 minutesFires in about 4 km pixels. A NASA researcher has published hourly Punjab and Haryana fire detections from it for 2019–2025 (dataset, paper).Could use: free, CC BY 4.0, past seasons only
Sentinel-3A/3B/3C SLSTR
Europe (ESA/EUMETSAT)		About 10:30 AM and 10:30 PMFire radiative power in 1 km pixels, with a night pass too.Could use (Copernicus, free account)
FY-3D MERSI-II
China (CMA)		About 2:30 PMFires in 1 km pixels (ESSD 2022). Same lunch-hour shift as VIIRS, so no help with the evening.Could use (registration)
Sentinel-2, Landsat 8/9
Europe (ESA); USA (NASA/USGS)		About 10:30–11 AM, every few daysBurn scars at 10–30 m. Scars don't care what time the fire was lit. (FIRMS only publishes Landsat fire points for the US and Canada.)Could use: on our burnt-area roadmap
Himawari-9 AHI
Japan (JMA)		Every 10 minutesIts wildfire product stops at 80°E. Punjab is at about 75°E.Can't: Punjab is off the edge
FireSat
USA (Earth Fire Alliance, Google, Muon Space)		At least twice a day, once completeFires "as small as five-by-five meters". First three satellites reached orbit in July 2026.Not yet: India coverage and data terms unknown

😷 Smoke and gas sniffers

SatelliteOver Punjab (IST)What it seesStatus here
Sentinel-5P TROPOMI
Europe (ESA/Copernicus)		About 2 PM, dailyNO₂, carbon monoxide and smoke aerosol in 3.5 × 5.5 km pixels. Good for mapping the plume.Could use (free account)
NOAA-20, NOAA-21 VIIRS
USA (NOAA)		Same passes as the fire dataAerosol optical depth and a smoke/dust mask in 750 m pixels, posted publicly within about half an hour.Could use: no account needed
INSAT-3DS, INSAT-3DR
India (ISRO), geostationary		Every 30 minutes, daytimeAerosol optical depth at about 10 km (method).Could use with a MOSDAC account
EOS-06 (Oceansat-3) OCM-3
India (ISRO)		Daytime passAerosol optical depth at 1 km (ISRO).Could use with a MOSDAC account
GEMS on GK-2B
South Korea (NIER), geostationary		8 times a dayNO₂ and aerosols at 7 × 8 km. Its view starts at 75°E, so Delhi is in and Punjab is only partly in.Partly: licence bars modified use
MetOp-B/C IASI, GOME-2
Europe (EUMETSAT)		About 10 AMCarbon monoxide and NO₂ in coarse pixels (WMO OSCAR).Could use
Aura OMI
USA (NASA) with the Netherlands and Finland		Early afternoonNO₂ and aerosols at 13 × 24 km. Power is expected to run short by mid-2028.Could use, but TROPOMI is sharper
MOPITT on Terra, CALIPSO
Canada/USA; USA/France		–Carbon monoxide; vertical smoke profiles.Ended: MOPITT Feb 2025, CALIPSO Aug 2023
TEMPO, Sentinel-4
USA; Europe		Hourly, elsewhereHourly pollution maps, for North America and Europe.Can't: wrong continent
An Indian air-quality satellite–Doesn't exist yet. ISRO's aerosol nanosatellite NEMO-AM is listed as "Planned".Under consideration

Smoke readings measure the whole column of air, not what you breathe at street level, and they need a clear daytime sky. Winter haze and fog leave gaps.

The fire explorer

Pick any window. Every chart on this page except the season comparison follows it, and the URL updates, so you can send the exact view to your MLA.

States
Fire detections
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satellite pixels flagged as burning
Total fire radiative power
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sum of MW across detections
Districts with fires
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Spotted after 3 PM IST
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Almost all of these come from Aqua, the satellite that's running late.

Where

When: detections per day, by state

Hall of Flame: worst districts

#DistrictStateDetectionsFRP (MW)

Who's been in charge? Everyone. 🎠

Ruling parties since 2015, by government. Every major party in the region has held power somewhere during the smoke years. Pick your favourite to blame; they've all had a turn.

Coalition partners are shown under the lead party. Emoji stand in for election symbols.

A decade of bold action™

Who did what, and what came of it. Tags show who acted (tap one to check who was in charge): the Union government or its agencies, a State government, or a Court.

  1. 2009
    Punjab⚖️ SAD–BJP
    Punjab delays paddy planting to save groundwater. Sensible on its own, but it pushes the harvest later and squeezes the gap before wheat sowing to a couple of weeks. Fastest way to clear a field in a hurry? A matchstick.Side effect: still in effect
  2. Dec 2015
    Court🏛️ National Green Tribunal
    Bans crop-residue burning in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, UP and Rajasthan. Fines: ₹2,500 to ₹15,000.Banned ✅ Stopped ❌
  3. 2018
    Union🪷 BJP-led NDA
    Launches the Crop Residue Management scheme, subsidising balers, Happy Seeders and friends. By June 2026: ₹4,266 crore released and 3.54 lakh machines handed out.See map above for results
  4. 2019
    Court🏛️ Punjab & Haryana High Court
    Stays recovery of stubble-burning fines from farmers in both states, and asks the agricultural universities to suggest alternatives.Fines: paused ⏸️
  5. Oct 2020
    Union🪷 BJP-led NDA
    Creates the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) by ordinance, to finally coordinate NCR's air.Commission formed. Smoke not informed.
  6. 2020
    Delhi🧹 AAP
    Sprays the IARI-developed Pusa bio-decomposer on 1,935 acres of Delhi farmland and declares it a success.Punjab's paddy: ~75 lakh acres
  7. Sep 2022
    Punjab🧹 AAPDelhi🧹 AAPUnion🪷 BJP-led NDA
    Punjab proposes ₹2,500 per acre to farmers who don't burn, with the Centre paying ₹1,500. The Centre says no. The two AAP governments settle for a 5,000-acre decomposer pilot.Everyone agrees someone else should pay
  8. Oct 2023
    Haryana🪷 BJP
    Offers ₹1,000 per acre to farmers who manage straw without burning it.Payment delays reported 📬
  9. Nov 2023
    Court🏛️ Supreme Court
    Orders Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and UP to stop stubble burning. How? That's the states' job, says the court.Stopped? See 2024 ⬇️
  10. Jan 2024
    Union agencyCAQM
    Forms an expert committee under ISRO's NRSC to standardise how burnt area is measured.Under validation…
  11. Oct–Nov 2024
    Court🏛️ Supreme CourtUnion🪷 BJP-led NDA
    The Supreme Court says the anti-burning law has been left "toothless" and hears that farmers were allegedly advised to burn after satellites pass. The Centre doubles fines to ₹5,000–₹30,000.Fires learn to tell time ⏰
  12. Nov 2025
    Union agencyISRO
    An ISRO study confirms that peak burning has moved to late afternoon and evening (Space Applications Centre, Current Science).Now officially working night shifts
  13. Nov 2026
    Union agencyIARI
    Still no finalised burnt-area protocol. IARI says, under RTI, that it is "only researching" one.Loading 2 years and counting

Smog season excuse bingo 🎱

Keep this open during the next press conference. Tap a square each time you hear one. Get five in a row to win clean air (offer not valid in NCR). Every square really happened: hit ↗ to see who said or did it.

 

Before you blame the farmer: a quick maths lesson 🧮

It's late October in Sangrur. The paddy is cut. Wheat has to be sown in about two weeks or the yield suffers. The field is covered in loose straw. Our farmer has these options:

OptionCostTimeThe catch
🌱 Rent a seeder to sow straight into the strawThousands of rupees an acre. Punjab reckoned ₹2,500/acre of compensation was fair.Whenever the machine turns up3.54 lakh subsidised machines exist across four states, and every farmer needs one in the same fortnight.
📦 Bale it and sell itBaling costs moneyDaysTo whom? The two big straw-to-ethanol plants (Panipat, running; Bathinda, still under construction) are built to eat 2 lakh tonnes a year each: a rounding error of the straw mountain.
🧪 Spray bio-decomposerCheap~20 days to break downWheat needed sowing yesterday.
🙏 Wait for the promised incentiveFreeHaryana: "payment delays". Punjab's ₹2,500/acre ask: the Centre said no.Your landlord and your bank still want their money on time.
🔥 Matchstick₹1One eveningUp to ₹30,000 fine, if caught. Most satellites have clocked out by 3 PM.

Put any of us in those boots and we'd be lighting the match too. Burning isn't a character flaw. It's the cheapest answer to a problem built by people who will never stand in that field.

Why the government fines the farmer instead of fixing anything

✅ Easy: one press release, done by lunch

  • Double the fines
  • File FIRs against farmers
  • Put "red entries" in their land records
  • Blame the neighbouring state (ruled by the other party, obviously)
  • Inaugurate a smog tower; pose for photos
  • Form a committee

🏗️ Hard: takes longer than one election cycle

  • Change what Punjab grows. Guaranteed government buying (MSP) makes thirsty paddy the safe bet, so Punjab grows rice that mostly leaves the state, using groundwater it doesn't have.
  • Fix the crop calendar squeezed by the 2009 groundwater law, without draining the aquifers.
  • Build a real straw market (collection, storage, buyers, prices) so straw is worth more than a matchstick.
  • Get machines to small farmers on time, not just on paper.
  • Pay farmers not to burn, and actually send the money.
  • Make the Centre and five state governments, run by rival parties, cooperate for more than one press conference.

A fine fits in a tweet and makes the problem the farmer's fault. A fix takes years, money and cooperation between rivals, and the credit might go to whoever wins the next election. So, year after year, we get the tweet.

So what should Punjab grow? 🌽

First, a quick look at the national grain strategy, as currently practised.

152–156%
of its annual groundwater recharge is what Punjab pumps out. 110 of 153 blocks are "over-exploited".
CGWB 2025, via Down To Earth
~3×
the required buffer: rice in central stocks was 403 lakh tonnes against a norm of 135 (1 Jul 2026).
Business Today, Oct 2026
₹1.61 lakh crore
spent importing ~16 million tonnes of edible oil in 2024-25.
SEA, via Outlook Business
7.3 Mt
of pulses imported in 2024-25 (~$5.5 billion), a record.
Trade data, via Vajiram & Ravi

So: Punjab drains its aquifers to grow rice the country already has too much of, while India spends lakhs of crores importing oil and pulses that Punjab could grow on far less water. Somewhere, a committee is calling this "food security".

Why farmers still pick paddy (spoiler: they're not stupid)

The menu

CropWater vs paddyWhere it fitsReturns & risk todayNation needs it?
🌽 Kharif maizeMuch lessMost of Punjab, except waterlogged pocketsRoughly equal to paddy at best; no assured buyer; needs drying✅ Feed & ethanol demand rising
🫘 Summer moong between wheat and paddyVery littleStatewide, a ~60-day catch cropShort crop; market price is the risk✅✅ Record pulse imports; also fixes nitrogen
☁️ CottonLessSouth-west Malwa: Bathinda, Mansa, FazilkaLower and volatile; pink bollworm✅ Textiles
🌼 Mustard & oilseedsLessSome rabi land now under wheatDecent; price support patchy✅✅ The biggest import bill
🍊 Kinnow, vegetables, poplarMostly lessAbohar–Fazilka (kinnow), near citiesCan pay well; needs cold chains and buyers➖ Niche, not a replacement
🌾 Smarter paddy where it staysPR-126: ~25% less; direct seeding: 10–20% lessStatewideAlready 33% of paddy area (2023)✅ Less water and a wider gap before wheat, so less burning

PAU on PR-126: it "requires less water, has less straw load while ensuring more window period between rice harvest and wheat sowing". The shorter the paddy season, the less the farmer needs a matchstick.

How to actually make them switch (hint: not a press release)

💰 Things that would work

  • Guarantee the price of the alternative. Buy maize, pulses and oilseeds at MSP, or pay the gap when the mandi pays less.
  • Pay for water saved, whatever the crop. Fund it from the power subsidy the farmer would stop using.
  • Line up anchor buyers. Ethanol and feed plants contract maize at a fixed price before sowing, like the government does for paddy.
  • Keep paddy where the water allows, but short-duration and direct-seeded.

🧪 What's been tried

The pattern isn't complicated: farmers grow whatever the government guarantees to buy. Today that's paddy. So we get paddy, sinking aquifers and smoke, and then an emergency meeting about the smoke. Fixing it means guaranteeing a market for pulses, oilseeds and maize, and that costs real money for years. A fine costs nothing.

The fine print (we're the honest ones here)

  • Detections, not fires. Each point is a 375 m (VIIRS) or 1 km (MODIS) pixel that one satellite flagged as hot during one pass. The same field can show up on several satellites.
  • Undercount by design. Polar satellites look a few times a day. A falling count can mean better hiding, not less burning.
  • Burnt area is the real measure. India still has no finalised burnt-area protocol, two years after the Supreme Court asked (Indian Express, Nov 2026). Burnt-area mapping is on this project's roadmap.
  • Not every fire is stubble. Industrial heat sources are removed where FIRMS flags them (archived data). Recent data may include a few.
  • Season comparison uses one satellite (NOAA-20), because S-NPP stopped sending data on 2 Nov 2026 and NOAA-21 only started in 2023. Mixing them would fake a trend.
  • Boundaries are Census-2011 districts; newer districts are counted inside their parent.

Data: NASA FIRMS (VIIRS NOAA-20, NOAA-21, S-NPP; MODIS Aqua/Terra), standard-processing archives where available, else near-real-time. Times in IST. Updated every 3 hours.

Desi-to-English dictionary 📖

Terms you'll meet on this page. Dotted-underlined words show the same definitions when you hover or tap them.