FOG EXPECTED ON SATURDAY MORNING, SAY MET OFFICIALS

NEW DELHI: It was a misty Friday morning in the capital with the minimum temperature recorded at 8 degrees Celsius, one notch above the season’s average, the weather office said.

On Saturday, mainly clear sky is expected with shallow or moderate fog in the morning. The maximumandminimumtemperatures would be around 24 and 9 degrees Celsius respectively.

According to a MET official, the wind flow Friday was from westnorthwest direction of Delhi (i.e. Haryana) with possibility of shallow fog on Saturday morning.

“The maximum temperature on Friday was 23.7 degree Celsius, four notches above normal. At the Safdarjung observatory, which is considered representative of the entire city, and at Palam, there was no fog. In the morning hours, there was mist,” a MET official said.

Disruptions in train operations, however, continued. Over 56 trains were running late, 25 rescheduled and 25 cancelled due to low visibility in Delhi and other parts of North India on Thursday, railway officials said.

In terms of pollution, the air quality improved and became “poor”. The AQI clocked 297, better compared to Thursday’s 308, which is “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.

Central Pollution Control Board air l aboratory chief Dipankar Saha said the air quality might deteriorate a bit on Saturday. “Wind speed will be marginally lower during the day time. Along with fog in the morning, this might lead to pollution levels increasing a bit,” Saha said.

According to the CPCB realtime monitoring, at 6pm on Friday, the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 were 155.6ug/m3 and 276.4ug/m3 respectively. This was a bit more compared to Thursday as at 6pm the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 were 151.6ug/m3 and 268ug/m3.

Both PM10 and PM2.5 are ultrafine particles, the dominant pollutants in Delhi. The acceptable levels of PM10, the larger particulate matter, and PM 2.5, which measures the finer and more dangerous particulate matter, are 100μg/m3 and 60μg/m3, respectively.