HamariHawa

Report · 20 October 2026

Two Punjabs: seven seasons of crop fires

Between 2021 and 2025, the crop fires NASA's satellites saw in Indian Punjab fell by 95%. Across the border, Pakistani Punjab ended higher than it started: 10,076 fire spots in 2019, 12,511 in 2025. Since 2024, the satellite has seen more crop fires in Pakistani Punjab than in Indian Punjab, and in 2025 it saw 3.5 times as many.

Parali ki aag: 2021 se 2025 tak Indian Punjab mein satellite ko dikhne wali aag 95% kam hui, magar Pakistani Punjab mein nahi. 2025 mein Pakistani Punjab mein 3.5 guna zyada aag dikhi.

−95%Indian Punjab, 2021 to 2025
+24%Pakistani Punjab, 2019 to 2025
3.5×Pakistani vs Indian Punjab, 2025
0.99match with India's official counts

Check this report. Every number here is in seasons.json, which two scripts in our open-source code rebuild from NASA's archive: scripts/backfill-days.py, then scripts/season-stats.py (you need a free NASA FIRMS key). As a cross-check, our Indian Punjab counts and India's official ones have a correlation of 0.988.

This is the first season-by-season comparison of both Punjabs counted the same way that we know of. India publishes daily fire counts for its states, and its press reports them every day of the season. We could find no equivalent public series for Pakistani Punjab. To compare the two fairly we counted every fire spot NASA's Suomi NPP satellite saw on either side of the border in each October and November since 2019, using one method throughout.

The lines crossed in 2024

Fire spots seen by Suomi NPP, 1 Oct–30 Nov
0k20k40k60k80k2019202020212022202320242025Indian Punjab 2019: 40.663kIndian Punjab 2020: 65.199kIndian Punjab 2021: 69.468kIndian Punjab 2022: 42.111kIndian Punjab 2023: 28.11kIndian Punjab 2024: 8.015kIndian Punjab 2025: 3.604kPakistani Punjab 2019: 10.076kPakistani Punjab 2020: 13.212kPakistani Punjab 2021: 20.654kPakistani Punjab 2022: 11.258kPakistani Punjab 2023: 11.049kPakistani Punjab 2024: 10.884kPakistani Punjab 2025: 12.511kHaryana 2019: 5.739kHaryana 2020: 5.214kHaryana 2021: 9.554kHaryana 2022: 4.213kHaryana 2023: 2.647kHaryana 2024: 1.753kHaryana 2025: 1.097kHaryana1,097 in 2025Indian Punjab3,604 in 2025Pakistani Punjab12,511 in 2025

Indian Punjab's count rose to a peak of 69,468 in 2021, then fell every year to 3,604 in 2025. Haryana followed the same path at a smaller scale. Pakistani Punjab stayed between 10,076 and 13,212 every season except 2021, when it reached 20,654, and ended 2025 24% above where it started.

In 2025, three Pakistani districts alone, Jhang, Okara and Hafizabad, had 4,295 fire spots between them, more than all of Indian Punjab (3,604).

SeasonPakistani PunjabIndian PunjabHaryanaPakistan ÷ India
201910,07640,6635,7390.25
202013,21265,1995,2140.20
202120,65469,4689,5540.30
202211,25842,1114,2130.27
202311,04928,1102,6470.39
202410,8848,0151,7531.36
202512,5113,6041,0973.47

Can these counts be trusted?

We checked our method against India's official figures, which come from the same kind of satellite data, processed by India's Commission for Air Quality Management and the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre. Across seven seasons the two series move together almost perfectly (correlation 0.988). Ours run at 70%–97% of the official numbers, which is expected: we count only one satellite and only from 1 October, while India's season starts on 15 September. The one year they disagree on direction is 2021, which we count as slightly up on 2020 and India counts as slightly down. In 2025 our busiest Indian district is Tarn Taran, which the Indian press also reported as the worst that season.

Because the same code counts both sides of the border, the Pakistani numbers are as reliable as the Indian ones. Pakistan doesn't publish a comparable count, so there's no official figure to check them against directly.

Indian Punjab: our count (dark) vs India's official count (light)
0k20k40k60k80k2019, our count: 40,6632019, official count: 52,99120192020, our count: 65,1992020, official count: 76,59020202021, our count: 69,4682021, official count: 71,30420212022, our count: 42,1112022, official count: 49,92220222023, our count: 28,1102023, official count: 36,66320232024, our count: 8,0152024, official count: 10,90920242025, our count: 3,6042025, official count: 5,1142025
SeasonOur count (Suomi NPP, 1 Oct–30 Nov)India's official count (15 Sep–30 Nov)Ours as share
201940,66352,99177%
202065,19976,59085%
202169,46871,30497%
202242,11149,92284%
202328,11036,66377%
20248,01510,90973%
20253,6045,11470%

Fewer fires, or fires the satellite missed?

Fire counts are a floor, not a total. A polar-orbiting satellite like Suomi NPP passes over around 1:30 pm and 1:30 am, and only sees a fire that is burning at that moment. Over the past two seasons, Indian researchers and NASA scientist Hiren Jethva have shown that many farmers in Indian Punjab now burn in the late afternoon, after the daytime pass. The think tank iFOREST, using a European geostationary satellite that looks every 15 minutes, found that over 90% of large farm fires in Punjab in 2024 and 2025 started after 3 pm, against 3% in 2021. Burnt-area maps tell the same story: iFOREST puts Punjab's burnt area at about 20,000 km² in 2025, down from 31,447 km² in 2022, a fall of about a third rather than the 91% fall in fire counts.

Our own data shows a trace of this shift. The night pass catches very few crop fires anywhere, but in Indian Punjab and Haryana the night count held steady or rose while daytime fires collapsed, so the share caught at night went up sharply. In Pakistani Punjab it stayed flat, at around 3–6% every season.

Share of fires seen on the 1:30 am pass
0%10%20%30%2019202020212022202320242025Pakistani Punjab 2019: 4.83327%Pakistani Punjab 2020: 5.51014%Pakistani Punjab 2021: 3.13741%Pakistani Punjab 2022: 4.35246%Pakistani Punjab 2023: 4.93257%Pakistani Punjab 2024: 5.02573%Pakistani Punjab 2025: 5.65103%Indian Punjab 2019: 0.0442663%Indian Punjab 2020: 0.0935597%Indian Punjab 2021: 0.0475039%Indian Punjab 2022: 0.123483%Indian Punjab 2023: 0.19566%Indian Punjab 2024: 1.57205%Indian Punjab 2025: 2.303%Haryana 2019: 3.22356%Haryana 2020: 4.29613%Haryana 2021: 1.52816%Haryana 2022: 5.05578%Haryana 2023: 8.99131%Haryana 2024: 20.7074%Haryana 2025: 23.6098%Indian Punjab2.3% in 2025Pakistani Punjab5.7% in 2025Haryana23.6% in 2025
SeasonPakistani PunjabIndian PunjabHaryana
2019487 (4.8%)18 (0.0%)185 (3.2%)
2020728 (5.5%)61 (0.1%)224 (4.3%)
2021648 (3.1%)33 (0.0%)146 (1.5%)
2022490 (4.4%)52 (0.1%)213 (5.1%)
2023545 (4.9%)55 (0.2%)238 (9.0%)
2024547 (5.0%)126 (1.6%)363 (20.7%)
2025707 (5.7%)83 (2.3%)259 (23.6%)

So two things are true at once. Burning in Indian Punjab has really fallen, but by much less than the fire counts say, because more of it now happens out of the satellite's sight. In Pakistani Punjab we see no sign of the same shift: the counts haven't fallen and the night share hasn't moved. That makes the gap between the two Punjabs in recent seasons partly an artefact of timing, and the true gap is probably smaller than 3.5 times. It does not make it disappear: on the counts that both sides are measured by, Pakistani Punjab went from a quarter of India's number to well over it. Settling the real size of the gap needs geostationary or burnt-area data for the Pakistani side, which nobody has published.

Where in Pakistani Punjab

The burning is concentrated in the rice belt between Lahore, Gujranwala and Jhang. The same handful of districts lead every season. Spots the place-name data couldn't put in a district (4,280 over seven seasons) are left out of this table.

District2019202020212022202320242025
Jhang1,0179972,0131,4061,5581,2171,641
Hafizabad9961,2852,2191,5141,1059281,289
Okara1,0691,5261,5991,0829991,5401,365
Gujranwala5507871,745775696778979
Nankana Sahib7026821,463868762714928
Shekhupura5127421,208667612624527
Pakpattan468528717312321467477
Kasur311489645356369494454
Khanewal507353701284373232344
Dera Ghazi Khan268455578181409294448

Watch any season move district by district on the fire trends map.

When the burning peaks

The busiest week usually starts in the last days of October or the first days of November on both sides. In 2023 and 2024 Pakistani Punjab peaked about two weeks later than Indian Punjab, in mid-November.

SeasonPakistani Punjab: busiest week startsIndian Punjab: busiest week starts
20194 Nov30 Oct
20206 Nov1 Nov
20214 Nov5 Nov
202228 Oct30 Oct
202314 Nov31 Oct
202417 Nov31 Oct
202530 Oct29 Oct

How this was counted

Sources for others' findings: iFOREST's geostationary analysis and Hiren Jethva's observations as reported by The Tribune and Health Policy Watch; CEEW's explainer on satellite detection; India's official counts as reported by The Tribune and The Tribune (2025).

Please cite as: HamariHawa, "Two Punjabs: seven seasons of crop fires", hamarihawa.org/report/two-punjabs/, October 2026.