Drastic improvement in Noida’s air quality

Noida’s air quality improved on Wednesday from “severe” a day before to the lower range of “very poor”, according to the central pollution control board’s (CPCB’s) air quality index.

Its quality is, however, likely to deteriorate again due to fluctuations in the weather for the Delhi-NCR cities over next four days, a pollution monitoring agency said.

Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad were the worst polluted cities due to almost stagnant winds and poor ventilation conditions on Tuesday, however the wind picked up on Wednesday. The three cities had earlier been that bad on January 1,2 15 and 17.

According to the CPCB, Noida’s AQI, on a scale of 0 to 500, on Wednesday was 310 against 432 a day earlier.

The AQI of Greater Noida was 321 against 434 a day earlier. The AQI of Ghaziabad was 336 against 436 a day earlier.

An AQI between 101 and 200 is considered ‘moderate’, between 201 and 300 is ‘poor’, between 301 and 400 is considered ‘very-poor’ and above 400 is considered ‘severe’.

According to the weather department, the wind directions have already changed to north-westerly and now caught pace, that will remain for another day, leading to better ventilation conditions.

“The wind seed have picked up and reached around 18 kmph on Wednesday for most of the day. This lead to better ventilation and dispersion of the particles. The winds are likely to continue for another day, so the ventilation is likely to continue and air quality may further improve,” said Kuldeep Srivstava, head, regional weather forecasting centre, India Meteorological Department (IMD).

On Wednesday, the major pollutant or PM2.5 in the region improved to three times of the safety standards against seven times the standards on Tuesday.

The average PM2.5 for Noida on Wednesday was 146 microgrammes per cubic metres (µg/m3) against 334.71 µg/m3 on Tuesday. The average PM2.5 for Greater Noida was 169.18 µg/m3 against 314.38 µg/m3 a day earlier. The PM2.5 level for Ghaziabad was 151.32 µg/m3 against 346.63 µg/m3 a day earlier. The safe limit for PM2.5 is 60µg/m3.

According to the System of air quality and weather forecasting and research (Safar), the air quality is likely to improve towards Thursday but will deteriorate again from Friday onwards.

“Surface winds are Westerly and high and forecasted to stay high for the next 36 hrs. Better ventilation coefficients are likely to improve air quality to the Poor category for tomorrow. Marginal deterioration of AQI to Very Poor category is forecasted on 22nd and 23rd January,” said Safar on Wednesday.