India, March 7 -- New Delhi

The upcoming wheat harvesting season, typically lasting through April and May, will be used to fine-tune satellite-based modelling to identify the total burnt area of crop residue, given that the model currently shows greater burnt area than the ground reality, officials of the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) said.

A senior CAQM official, who did not wish to be named, said they will use a combination of farm fire counts and the total burnt area to assess how states fare moving forward, and they were working on refining their algorithms.

"We will be using this upcoming summer harvest window to assess burnt area, with on-ground checks to be carried out in April and May. In the previous harvesting ...