Delhi: Air quality slips, close to ‘severe’

NEW DELHI: Delhi’s air worsened on Sunday as the air quality index (AQI) reached 391 from Saturday’s 371, according to Central Pollution Control Board’s daily bulletin.
Neighbouring NCR towns of Ghaziabad (413) and Noida (414), however, recorded “severe” air quality on Sunday. Greater Noida (395), and Gurugram (362) had “very poor” AQI like Delhi.
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An AQI between 0-50 is considered ‘good’, 51-100 ‘satisfactory’, 101-200 ‘moderate’, between 201 and 300 it’s classified as ‘poor’, between 301 and 400 it’s ‘very poor’ and between 401 and 500 is ‘severe’ on CPCB’s index.According to the CPCB central control room, the 24-hour average PM2.5 and PM10 readings were more than three times above the safe standards on Sunday.
According to SAFAR, slow and calm surface wind condition is likely to continue till Monday and forecast suggests a slight deterioration of AQI but within the higher-end of ‘very poor’ category.
“Marginal increase in surface winds and a slight improvement in AQI within the very poor category is predicted for Tuesday. A fresh western disturbance is likely to affect northwest India by Wednesday, scattered rainfall is expected on Thursday and significant improvement in AQI is expected. Few biomass fire counts are observed, but no significant biomass fire PM2.5 contribution is expected for the coming days,” a SAFAR report stated.
According to a MeT official, wind speed at the moment is around 6-8km per hour and not much improvement is expected till November 10. “From Wednesday evening, the wind speed will pick up slightly. On 12-13, wind speed will increase further,” the official told TOI.