Every year during the winter season, a dark shadow starts looming over the sky of North India, which gradually takes away the right to breathe of crores of people here. This year too, a similar heart-wrenching scene has been seen, when pictures taken from space have exposed the reality of humans living on the ground and the poor condition of the environment. The state-of-the-art Earth Observation Satellites of NASA, the world’s most prestigious space agency, have captured some such satellite images of North India and especially Delhi-NCR and its surrounding plains, seeing which the soul of any common man can tremble. Right after Diwali, stubble burning, vehicle smoke, industrial pollution and weather conditions have combined to create such a poisonous and dense smog across North India that, when seen from space, appears to be engulfing the entire region like a giant brown and yellow monster. These scary pictures and visuals released by NASA have once again proved that how much our environment has reached ICU and if strict steps are not taken in time, then survival here will become a huge struggle for the coming generations.
When scientists analyzed images sent by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and other advanced satellites, they found that over Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh and the National Capital Region (NCR) there was only a thick layer of dense aerosols and toxic particles in place of clouds. From space, it appears as if a smoke dome has been erected over the entire area, within which even the sun’s rays seem to be struggling to reach the ground. According to the space agency, the amount of these microscopic particles (PM 2.5 and PM 10) floating in the air is many times more than the safe standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO). In the pictures taken from the satellite, it can be clearly seen how the smoke of stubble burning in the fields is flowing with the westerly winds and is spreading over the plains and along with the local pollution, it is creating a deadly mixture which is making the air completely poisonous.