New Delhi: Strong surface wind barreled through Delhi and neighboring areas on Monday, improving air quality.
The city recorded an average air quality index of 24 hours in 311, down from 349 on Sunday.
It’s 374 on Saturday.
Neighbor Faridabad (330), Ghaziabad (254), Greater Noida (202), Gurugram (310) and Noida (270) also recorded a slight increase in air quality.
R K Jenamani, a senior scientist in the Indian Meteorology Department (IMD), said the western wind entertained up to 25 kmph visibility which was upgraded to 3,200 meters.
So far, Monday was the only day in November when the observatory Palam reported “more than 3000 m visibility and strong winds”, he said.
Safar Monitor Quality Ministry of Earth Safar said AQI was recorded at the bottom of the “very bad” category on Monday, a “significant” increase from the previous day because of the low number of fires and strong transportation winds blowing from the northwest spread pollutants.
This wind tends to continue on Tuesday, which leads to further improvement in air quality to the ‘poor’ category (if there is no increase in the number of fires), he said.
The speed of local surface wind is also relatively high on Monday and will remain on Tuesday, he said, adding local levels of local and transportation is likely to slow down from Wednesday and produce a slight setback in air quality.
Safar said 909 agricultural fires contributed six percent of Delhi PM2.5 pollution on Monday.