Air quality slightly improves in Delhi-NCR, AQI settles in 'Poor' category

The air pollution level in the national capital and areas around it improved on Wednesday morning with the Air Quality Index (AQI) reaching the lower end of the 'Poor' category. In the morning, the AQI in Delhi docked at 218, according to the Center-run System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR).

The AQI was recorded the highest in Chandni Chowk at 271, followed by Mathura Road at 240, Dhirpur at 239, Pusa at 225, Lodhi Road at 222, Airport (T3) at 215, Delhi University at 212, Ayanagar at 204, and IIT Delhi at 181. The AQI in Noida stood at 302 and Gurugram at 231.

The temperature at 5.30 am in Delhi's Safdarjung was 12.8 degrees Celcius and at Palam was 14 degrees Celcius. The visibility at Safdarjung was 1,000 metres and at Palam was 1,200 metres.

Scattered to fairly widespread rainfall conditions are likely to continue up to January 9 and hence air quality is forecasted to remain in moderate to poor category. The improved air quality conditions are likely to stay long until the weekend since increased surface wind and good ventilation conditions forecasted to stay for an extended period.      

The fall in minimum temperature by 3-4 degree is expected from January 9-11 and the maximum temperature by 4 to 5 degrees during January 8-10.

In November 2019, the Supreme Court had come down heavily on the Centre and state government over their failure to tackle the pollution crisis in the national capital regions. A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Deepak Gupta had remarked, "The people of Delhi are living in a gas chamber. It is better to get explosives and kill everyone". 

Measures like containing stubble burning activities in the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana, implementation of the odd-even scheme in Delhi and banning all sort of construction activities in Delhi-NCR were taken in order to control the air pollution in the capital and adjoining areas.

An AQI between 0-50 is considered `good`, 51-100 `satisfactory`, 101-200 `moderate`, 201-300 `poor`, 301-400 `very poor` and 401-500 is marked as `severe`. An AQI above 500 falls in the `severe plus` category.

During winter each year, most of northern India suffers from a spike in toxicity in the air due to the change in weather patterns and crop residue burning in the neighbouring states of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.