E-Paper
AQI back to moderate in Chandigarh
The AQI had crossed 400 on Thursday (Diwali night) but had later dipped below 100. However on Friday, as many people burst crackers again, the AQI again went up to 315 as per the Chandigarh Pollution Control Committee (CPCC) data.
The city’s air quality index (AQI) finally turned moderate on Saturday, settling around 145 by late evening.
The AQI had crossed 400 on Thursday (Diwali night) but had later dipped below 100. However on Friday, as many people burst crackers again, the AQI again went up to 315 as per the Chandigarh Pollution Control Committee (CPCC) data. AQI past 300 is categorised as poor and it said to cause respiratory illnesses on prolonged exposure.
While the city has two Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS), this spike was only seen at the Sector 22 observatory which is more centrally located in the city as compared to the Sector 25 observatory.
CPCC member secretary Debendra Dalai said, “Not many crackers were burst on Friday but temperature had gone down on Friday night, so it is likely that temperature inversion played some role in this as well. Rest we urge people to follow the cracker ban as it is in their best interest.”
The AQI had gone down to poor from 7 pm onwards and it took till midnight for the AQI to come down in the moderate bracket (below 200). It dipped below 100 into the satisfactory bracket at 5am on Saturday. Following this, the AQI alternated between satisfactory and moderate here
Dry weather to continue
Dry weather is also likely to continue in the city as per the Met department. Maximum temperature dipped from 29.2 degrees on Friday to 28.3 degrees on Saturday. The minimum temperature went down from 12.7 degrees on Friday to 12.4 degrees on Saturday. In the next three days, the maximum temperature will remain around 28 degrees while minimum temperature will remain between 12 degrees and 13 degrees.
