Less fog this winter than previous three seasons: Govt

The occurrence of fog in Delhi has been "less" in December and January 2017-18 as compared to the previous three seasons, the government has said.
Minister of State for Environment Mahesh Sharma, in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha recently, said that the fog occurrence is just 19 days or 95 hours of total duration as on 29 January, 2018 in 2017-18.
"As per the information from India Meteorological Department (IMD), the fog occurrence is less in December- January of 2017-18 as compared to earlier three years viz. 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17.
"It is only 19 days (95 hours) of total duration as on 29 January, 2018 in 2017-18 as compared to 29 days (174 hours), 20 days (93 hours), 26 days (120 hours) for 2014-15, 2015-16 & 2016-17, respectively," he said.

He said that the IMD has initiated a Forecast Demonstration Project (FDP) on fog from 2016-17 (December to February) which is a multi-institutional initiative involving different institutes under the Earth Sciences Ministry, Space Application Centre, Indian Air Force, Indian Institute of Technology and others to monitor and forecast the fog occurrence over Indo-Gangetic Plains.
In addition, the Satellite Meteorological Division of IMD has come up with a tool like 'RAPID' to monitor the fog.
"Special observational campaign for monitoring of fog over Delhi and its forecast is being carried out jointly by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune and IMD, New Delhi.

"On the basis of all above, guidance bulletin is being issued from National Weather Forecasting Centre of IMD, Delhi on daily basis for the reference and use by all," he said.