Air quality improves to ‘very poor’, relief from heavy fog after 3 days
NEW DELHI: Delhi on Wednesday saw some relief from heavy fog even as the air quality improved to ‘very poor’ from being ‘severe’ on Tuesday.
The average Air Quality Index of Delhi was recorded at 398, a marginal dip from Tuesday’s 408, which was in the ‘severe’ zone. The AQI is calculated on a scale of 0-500. An AQI between 0-50 is considered good, 51-100 satisfactory, 101-200 moderate, 201-300 poor, 301-400 very poor and 401-500 severe.
According to RK Jenamani, the director in-charge of the IGI airport meteorological unit, the fog situation i mproved on Wednesday after three days.
“From 4am-6am, the visibility went down to around 100-150m. It then improved. The runway visual range was above the minimum requirement for take-offs and landings. There is similar forecast for Thursday,” he said.
A Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) official said there was no impact on flight operations due to Delhi weather on Wednesday.
At the Safdarjung observatory, which is considered a representative of the entire city, at 4am visibility came down to 100m.
“In the morning hours, after 6am, it became 400m and later it was 1,500m. This is because of good wind speed to the tune of 12-15km/hour throughout the day. On Thursday, there is a forecast of moderate fog with visibility expected to be 500m in the morning. It will further improve later in the day,” Kuldeep Srivastava, a senior Met department scientist, said.
In terms of temperature, the maximum on Wednesday was 18.4 degrees Celsius, a notch below normal, while the minimum was 7.4 degrees Celsius, which is normal for this time of the year.
According to the MET department, the maximum and minimum temperatures would be around 20 and 6 degrees Celsius respectively on Thursday.
The good wind speed also helped improve the air quality. According to the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) realtime monitoring, at 7pm on Wednesday, the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 were 227.4ug/ m3 and 374.3ug/m3 respectively.
“Strong winds from the north and north-west are vital for improving Delhi’s air quality,” said Dipankar Saha, head of the air quality laboratory at CPCB. NEWDELHI: The National Green Tribunal on Wednesday rejected a plea, seeking a “one family, one car” policy for Delhi-ncr. Terming the petition as “premature”, a bench headed by acting Chairperson justice UD Salvi disposed of the plea and allowed the petitioner to approach the authority concerned.
The plea was filed by advocate Sajan K Singh, alleging that there was a threat to human lives due to environmental degradation caused by carbon emissions from numerous private and commercial vehicles. “The period between 1981 and 2001 saw a phenomenal increase in the growth of vehicle and traffic in Delhi. There has been a rise in per capita trip rate (excluding walk trips) from 0.72 in 1981 to 0.87 in 2001,” Singh said in his plea. “Keeping in view the population growth, this translates into an increase from 45 lakh trips to around 118 lakh trips. The population of motor vehicles has increased from 5.13 lakh in 1981 to 32.38 lakh in 2001, and the number of buses has increased from 8,600 to 41,483 during this period,” the plea said.