Air quality improves in city as temperatures rise

BKC HAS WORST AIR QUALITY, MAZAGAON THE CLEANEST IN CITY

MUMBAI: The city’s air quality further improved on Friday even as night and day temperatures were morethan3degreesCelsiusabove normal. The pollutant-measuring indicator—airqualityindex(AQI) — was at 179 for Mumbai, falling under the ‘moderate’ category, as compared to 181 on Thursday. The System of Air Quality Weather ForecastingandResearch(SAFAR) pegged a ‘moderate’ AQI for Saturday as well, at 189.

An AQI between 101-200 falls under the ‘moderate’ category, 201-300 is ‘poor’ and above 301 is ‘very poor’.

On Friday, Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) was the most polluted location in the city, with ‘very poor’ AQI at 313. Andheri and Navi Mumbai followed with ‘poor’ AQI levels of 256 and 235, respectively. While the remaining six locations recorded ‘moderate’ air quality, Mazagaon recorded the cleanest air in the city with a ‘good’ AQI of 100.

“The busy traffic junctions at BKC did not allow the fast dispersion of pollutants on Friday, which was observed at all other locations in Mumbai. A similar observation was made at Andheri too,” said an official from SAFAR. “We expect AQI levels to be in the ‘moderate’ category till there is a drop in temperatures.”

The Santacruz weather station recorded the night temperature at almost 4 degrees Celsius above normal, at 22.6 degrees Celsius on Friday, as compared to 15 degrees Celsius, which was 3 degrees Celsius below normal last Sunday. Colaba, too, recorded a high minimum temperature of 24.6 degrees Celsius, 3.7 degrees Celsius above normal.

Meanwhile, day temperature at south Mumbai shot up almost 4 degrees Celsius above normal on Friday, at 35.8 degrees Celsius, as compared to 34.4 degrees Celsius, 2.3 degrees Celsius above normal on Thursday. On the other hand, the maximum temperature dropped by a degree in the suburbs from Thursday as Santacruz recorded 34.6 degrees Celsius, 2.3 degree Celsius above normal.