 "Pollution: Delhi AQI up 100 points in a day, dirtiest October air in 3 years")
As Delhi continues to breathe grey air, the national capital recorded its most polluted air for October in three years. The city’s Air Quality Index (AQI) on Thursday stood at 373, and the last time a higher number was recorded was in October 2022, when the AQI was 392.
The number shocker does not stop here. This year also saw one of the biggest leaps in AQI, a 100-point jump in a day. On Wednesday, the AQI was 279, and by Thursday, the category of air quality in Delhi slipped from “poor” to “very poor”.
The decline was caused by calm surface winds, high humidity, and cooler nighttime temperatures, which together created a temperature inversion, a phenomenon in which a layer of warm air traps cooler air near the ground, stopping pollutants from spreading.
Poor AQI, low visibility
A thick layer of smog made visibility extremely difficult across the city. Yesterday, Palam recorded a visibility of 1,000 m, while Safdarjung had a visibility of 800 m early in the morning.
The Air Quality Early Warning System reported that Delhi’s ventilation index, a measure of how well the atmosphere can disperse pollutants, stayed below the favourable threshold of 6,000 sq. m per second. The situation was worsened by a low mixing height and high humidity of around 90 per cent, which limited the vertical movement of pollutants.
According to data from the Decision Support System, stubble burning contributed a modest 2.57 per cent to Delhi’s PM2.5 levels, while vehicular emissions accounted for nearly 16.7 per cent as of Wednesday.
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More Shorts‘Leave Delhi’
Dr Gopi Chand Khilnani, chairman of PSRI Institute of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, told The Indian Express that people who can afford to leave Delhi should do so for at least six to eight weeks.
“I have been in Delhi for 40 years myself, I have grown up as a doctor at AIIMS, I was there for 30 years. I had a family to look after, and so I continued. Not that I did not know the danger – the first study we conducted on air pollution was in 1997!” he told the news outlet.
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