Air quality deteriorated from the higher end of the very poor to severe category on Thursday.
According to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), the overall air quality index (AQI) settled at 411 micrograms per cubic.
Delhi will not get any respite from pollution as pollution monitoring agency, SAFAR, a unit of Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), said that air quality is likely to deteriorate further and it may touch the higher end of severe category. Though the reason for the high concentration of pollutants in the city’s air is slow dispersion of particles due to meteorological factors,
stubble burning impact is also significant.
“It is likely to be in the ‘upper end of very poor’ to ‘severe’ category for the next two days. The effective fire count was reduced to 3914 today. Today’s share of crop residue burning is about 26 per cent in PM2.5,” SAFAR said.
According to MeT, at 12.6 degree Celsius, Thursday morning was the coldest of the season with the mercury falling below 13 degrees for the first time. Values of Suspended Particulate Matters (SPMs) on the National Ambient Air Quality Index (NAAQI) also recorded many folds higher than prescribed standards of WHO and IMD.
As per the SAFAR’s index, Particulate Matters (PMs) 10 and 2.5 were recorded at 387 and 237 micrograms per cubic.
In the short range air pollution forecast, values of both particles are expected to be 445 and 272 for Friday and 368 and 225 for Saturday!
An AQI between 201 and 300 is categorised as “poor”, between 301 and 400 “very poor” and over 400 is “severe”. At 8 am, at least 21 air quality monitoring stations were in the severe range, with Anand Vihar the worst (453).
Ghufran Beig, founder and project director at SAFAR, said local wind speed, which was hovering between 8-10 km/hr, was also expected to drop. “A combination of strong transport-level winds, along with calm wind speed over Delhi is likely to see ‘severe’ air again. If the farm fires remain the same, the share of stubble burning will start increasing again from Thursday as winds from Punjab and Haryana will pick up. Meanwhile, Delhi will see calm wind conditions and this can trap these pollutants locally,” he said.