Starting September 15, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute’s (IARI) Consortium for Research on Agroecosystem Monitoring and Modeling from Space (CREAMS) Laboratory puts out a daily bulletin on paddy residue fires.
- This bulletin, carrying data provides a district-wise breakdown of the number of farm fire incidents recorded, as well as comparative figures from previous years (2020 onwards).
- It also gives the exact location where these fires were recorded, the satellite that recorded them, time of recording, and their intensity or fire power.
- The CREAMS Laboratory was set up in 2013, with the primary purpose of monitoring crop conditions against extreme climatic events.
- Three sensors aboard three different NASA satellites — one called VIIRS aboard the Suomi NPP satellite, and two called MODIS, aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites — collect this data by recording land surface temperatures.
