Only cities across country with ‘severe’ air on Friday

NOIDA: The air quality of Noida and its neighbouring cities turned ‘severe’ on Friday after having remained within the ‘very poor’ category for the past two weeks. Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad were also the only three cities in the entire country to be in the ‘severe’ category of air quality on Friday.

Ghaziabad was the most polluted city, followed by Greater Noida and Noida, while rest of the national Capital region were under ‘very poor’ category.

According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the air quality index (AQI) of Noida, on a scale of 0 to 500, on Friday was 423, against 338 a day earlier.

Greater Noida’s AQI was 420 against 318 a day earlier. The AQI of Ghaziabad was 415 against 359 on Thursday.

An AQI between 101 and 200 is considered ‘moderate’, between 201 and 300 is ‘poor’, between 301 and 400 is considered ‘very-poor’ and above 400 is considered ‘severe’.

The three cities have been in either ‘very poor’ or ‘severe’ levels of AQI since January 13, while the best air quality last realised was under ‘moderate’ category on January 4.

Pollution monitoring agencies stated that the air quality will keep fluctuating into dangerous levels, even as the best respite expected for the next few days will be the lower end of the ‘very poor’ category.

“The wind speed was moderate, around 15 kmph, in certain areas of the NCR including south Delhi, however, it went low to around 5 kmph in some parts towards the afternoon. That could be one of the reasons why ventilation in certain areas of NCR has been poor and the particle pollutants could not disperse,” said Mahesh Palawat, vice-president, meteorology and climate change, Skymet.

On Friday, the average volume of major pollutant particulate matter (PM) 2.5 spiked to five times the standard.

The average PM2.5 for Noida on Friday was 299.54 microgrammes per cubic metres (µg/ m3), against 236.31µg/m3 a day earlier. The average PM2.5 for Greater Noida was 297.23µg/m3, against 233.2µg/m3 a day earlier. The PM2.5 level for Ghaziabad was 324.81µg/m3, against 221.06µg/m3 a day earlier. The safe limit for PM2.5 is 60µg/m3.

According to the System of air quality and weather forecasting and research (SAFAR), the weather conditions are not too supportive to pull the region’s air quality out of the ‘very poor’ category.

“An improvement in ventilation index is forecasted for the next two days, AQI is likely to marginally improve to the middle to lower-end of the ‘verypoor’ category for Saturday. AQI is forecasted to marginally deteriorate towards the middle-end of the ‘very poor’ category on January 31 and February 1,” said the SAFAR statement on Friday.