Another ‘very poor’ morning for Delhi as AQI dips further, IMD predicts cold wave

DElhi residents woke up to another “ really poor” morning time on fri as the subject capital's broadcast quality index (AQI) deteriorated further from Thursday evening’s levels.According to the data from the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) Sameer app, Delhi’s average AQI was recorded at 324 at 7:05 AM on Friday morning. This is 20 points up from 304 recorded on Thursday evening, plummeting the city further into the “very poor” category.Thirty-one of Delhi’s forty AQI monitoring stations recorded the pollution levels in the “very poor” category, with RK Puram topping the charts at 374. It was followed closely by Bawana and Nehru Nagar, which showed AQI levels at 373 and 366, respectively.The Mandir Marg monitoring station showed the lowest AQI in the city at 222, followed by NSIT, Dwarka, with an average AQI of 266, all still in the “poor” category.Cold wave warning in DelhiA mainly cloudy sky with shallow fog in the morning and cold wave conditions at isolated places have been predicted for Friday by the Air Quality Early Warning System for Delhi.The India Meteorological Department (IMD) stated that the minimum temperature is expected to settle at 5 degrees Celsius, while the maximum temperature, which had stood at 23.1 degrees Celsius, is expected to drop to 23 degrees Celsius.The predominant surface wind is likely to be from the northwest direction, with wind speeds of up to 10 kmph during the morning hours, it added.The wind speed will increase, becoming less than 12 kmph from the northwest direction in the afternoon, and then decrease, reaching less than 10 kmph from the northwest direction during the evening and night.New report exposes growing toxicity of the airA new assessment of the early winter trends (October-November) and annual air quality trends in the national capital by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), exposes the growing toxicity of the air, worsening of air quality in smaller towns of the National Capital region (NCR), and the risk of reversal of long term air quality gains in the city.According to a report released by the CSE on Monday, Delhi's air quality has deteriorated to the very poor to severe range despite a significantly lower contribution from farm fires this season, indicating the impact of local pollution sources, mainly from vehicles and combustion sources."Delhi and NCR cannot hide behind the smokescreen of farm fires any more as even with much lesser contribution to local air quality this time, air quality has turned very poor to severe, exposing the impact of local sources. However, more worrying is the daily synchronised rise of PM2.5 and other toxic gases, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO), largely from vehicles and combustion sources, creating a toxic cocktail that has gone unnoticed. The long-term air quality trend in Delhi has also plateaued without showing improvement. This signals an urgent need for deep-rooted shifts in infrastructure and systems to upscale action to cut emissions from vehicles, industry, power plants, waste, construction and household energy," Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director at CSE, said in the CSE report."What further stands out is the stubborn stability and the vast spread of the pollution levels across the NCR region, as well as the worsening and proliferation of more pollution hotspots in the city. The tinier towns in the region display more intense and longer-lasting smog buildup. Even though the peak pollution spikes are lower this winter due to lesser contribution of farm fires, the airshed is getting increasingly more saturated", Sharanjeet Kaur, deputy programme manager, Urban Lab, Clean Air unit, said.