Mild fog, better air quality on Monday
DROP IN RELATIVE HUMIDITY AND HIGHER WIND SPEED DOES NOT ALLOW FOG TO FORM AND HAS LED TO DROP IN POLLUTION LEVELS, SAID MET OFFICIALS
NEW DELHI: Delhiites woke up to mild fog on Monday morning with the minimum temperature touching 6.4 degrees Celsius, a degree above normal this time of the year.
The maximum temperature was 20.7 degrees Celsius, a notch above normal. On Saturday, the Safdarjung observatory, which is considered representative of the entire city, showed shallow fog, while at Palam there was moderate fog. There were no flight diversions or cancellations because of fog on Monday, a Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) official said.
MET officials said that relative humidity has dropped and the wind has also picked up speed. These two factors are not allowing fog to form. These changes in weather parameters have also resulted in a drop in pollution levels since January 1. “In the next one week possibilities of dense fog formation are less. There could be shallow and moderate fog in the morning hours but that would dissipate during the day. Visibility would be more than 200 metres at least,” an official said.
Disruptions in train operations, however, continued. Over 68 trains were running late, 21 rescheduled and 19 cancelled due to low visibility in Delhi on Monday, railway officials said.
On Tuesday, clear sky is expected. Moderate fog is expected in the morning and mist during the day. The maximum and minimum temperatures would be around 21 and 7 degrees Celsius respectively.
Pollution-wise, Delhi’s average Air Quality Index (AQI) was 289 under the ‘poor’ category. This is a substantial improvement from Sunday’s 371 which was ‘very poor’. 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 the CPCB realtime monitoring, at 6pm on Monday, the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 were 131.3 microgram per cubic metre (ug/m3) and 268.4 ug/m3 respectively.