Thanks to continuous rainfall and thundershowers on Sunday, Delhi’s air quality index (AQI) dropped to 80 on Monday compared with 355 the day before.
Light rainfall is on the forecast for Monday as well. A western disturbance over southern Afghanistan and easterly winds over northwest India have contributed to the prevailing weather conditions over the capital, according to the IMD.
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At 7 pm on Sunday at the Anand Vihar monitoring station, PM 10 levels dropped to 48 µg/m3 down from a high of 346 µg/m3 at 4 am. At Mandir Marg, PM 10 levels fell to 23 µg/m3 at 7 pm from 472 µg/m3 at 4 am. PM2.5 levels at Mandir Marg were nearly zero at 7 pm, as opposed to a figure of 349 µg/m3 at 4 am.
At Anand Vihar, the wind speed also began to pick up after 2 pm, which could have dispersed pollutants. At the Wazirpur station as well, the wind speed peaked at around 2 pm, while PM 2.5 levels simultaneously fell from 90 µg/m3 at noon to 16 µg/m3 at 3 pm.
A forecast on Sunday from the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) said the AQI is likely to “improve significantly and touch the moderate category” on Monday, mostly due to wind direction being from the eastern side and moderate rainfall. Owing to rainfall and change in wind direction, the contribution of stubble burning to Delhi’s air quality was only 2% on Sunday, compared to 14% on Saturday.” The ‘effective’ fire count was 815 on Sunday, down from 1,572 active fire counts.
“For the past one month, I have been tweeting data of air quality in Delhi. Pollution has increased in the last 3-4 days, and it is due to stubble burning in neighbouring states. Farmers in neighbouring states are compelled to burn stubble as their governments are doing nothing for them (towards stopping stubble burning),” Kejriwal said in an event organised to lay the foundation stone of a new government hospital in Shalimar Bagh.
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