Noida: A blanket of smog settled over parts of Delhi-NCR on Wednesday morning reducing visibility and causing the AQI to deteriorate to the ‘very poor' category after remaining in ‘poor' for four consecutive days.
The city's AQI saw a sharp rise to 359 from 222 the day before. Greater Noida and neighbouring Ghaziabad saw a similar deterioration in air quality on Wednesday, recording AQI at 364 and 350, respectively. Following the trend, Gurgaon also recorded air quality in the ‘very poor' category with an AQI of 321.
However, air quality slipped to the ‘severe' category in Delhi, with the capital recording an AQI of 418 on Wednesday, compared to 334 (very poor) the day before.
As per reports by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, visibility in Delhi-NCR was down to 400m on Wednesday morning. The meteorological office reported 'moderate' fog at Hindon and Ghaziabad airports around 9am. As per data, the region saw a slight decrease in temperature over the last 24 hours. Minimum temperature was recorded at 17.0 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, while maximum temperature was 27.8 degrees Celsius.
According to the weather forecast agency, fog is categorised as very dense when visibility is between 0 to 50 metres. Visibility between 51 and 200 metres identifies fog as dense. Moderate fog is identified with a visibility of 201 to 500, whereas 501 metres to 1,000 metres of visibility is present in shallow fog conditions and 1,000 in shallow fog conditions.
Air quality is expected to remain in the ‘very poor' category on Thursday and Friday. The six-day outlook indicates persistent ‘very poor' conditions.
"For the past 2-3 days, the wind speed has been in light variable due to which the local pollutants were accumulating. Low wind is unfavourable for the dispersal of pollutants. When the temperature is low the air becomes heavier and stays near to the earth surface due to which it creates a smoky layer that persists for longer duration. If the wind is fast it will get dispersed. But since the wind was slow today the pollution increased leading to a bad air quality index," said Mahesh Palawat, vice-chairman of Skymet Meteorology.
Despite the thick fog shrouding the city in the morning, Noida experienced minimal traffic disruption during peak hours. However, traffic movement slowed down on the Yamuna Expressway near Greater Noida for a few hours in the morning due to reduced visibility in the area.
"When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to see a sudden change in the weather. I was worried as it was all foggy and I had to leave for the office early in the morning. The traffic was indeed slow in some sectors of Noida, majorly the Delhi-connecting roads, but it was not an issue overall," said Sanjay Gupta, a resident of Sector 50 in the city.
The air quality levels varied across monitoring stations in both districts on Wednesday.
In Noida, the Sector 62 air monitoring station recorded the worst AQI, just reaching the ‘severe' category at 401 – up drastically from 284 (poor) the day before. Sector 116 and Sector 1 stations recorded air quality in the ‘very poor' category at 354 and 321, respectively. Sector 125 recorded the lowest AQI at 196 (moderate) on Wednesday.
In Greater Noida, both Knowledge Park 3 and 5 stations saw air quality deteriorating to the ‘very poor' category at 356 and 372 respectively. In neighbouring Ghaziabad, the Vasundhara station also recorded AQI at 401, followed by Loni (352), Indirapuram (332) and Sanjay Nagar (316) – all in the ‘very poor' category.
Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board imposed fines totalling Rs 2 lakh for GRAP violations on four different locations – these include two construction sites situated in Sector 132, one site in Sector 62, and a fire incident location in Sector 79. The board has also suggested fines of Rs 50,000 each at two separate spots near Sector 79 and Sector 98 where garbage burning was reported.
Meanwhile, in Delhi, a thick layer of greyish haze enveloped the capital on Wednesday as Delhi recorded its first ‘severe' day of the season.
According to the CPCB's bulletin released at 4pm, the AQI soared to 418 — the highest AQI in the country.
Delhi had last recorded a higher AQI on Jan 14, at 447.
The season also saw its first very dense fog, with visibility dropping to zero at Palam from 8am to 9.30am. The lowest visibility at Safdarjung, the city's base station, was recorded at 200 metres at 7am.
As visibility remained low throughout the day and the sun hardly made an appearance, the maximum temperature dipped to the season's lowest — 27.8 degrees Celsius — five degrees lower than the previous day. The minimum temperature was recorded at 17 degrees Celsius, three degrees above normal.
The AQI rose rapidly from 334 on Tuesday at 4pm to 366 at 9am on Wednesday and further to 451 at 8pm. However, the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) called it an "episodic event" and decided not to impose stringent restrictive measures under stage III of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).
According to experts, meteorological conditions, including dense fog, calm wind and low temperature, caused the trapping of pollutants. CPCB's data shows most of the city's stations reported air quality in the ‘severe' category.