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Rise in humidity puts Noida air back in ‘very-poor’ category
Noida: The air quality of Noida again deteriorated to ‘very-poor’ category as the humidity rose on Thursday owing to light rain in the morning and afternoon.
Noida: The air quality of Noida again deteriorated to ‘very-poor’ category as the humidity rose on Thursday owing to light rain in the morning and afternoon.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), there are chances of light rain on Friday morning as well. The weather analysts said the quality of the air across NCR now depends on how much rainfall it receives on Thursday night and Friday morning.
“The humidity has risen from 89% to 32% on Wednesday, to 87% to 64% on Thursday. The maximum temperature has also fallen by almost nine degrees, from 32.3 degrees Celsius on Wednesday to 23.4 degrees Celsius on Thursday,” an IMD official said.
The rise in humidity, coupled with drop in temperature, leads to a worsening of air quality as pollutants get trapped in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the wind direction remained variable on Thursday, with mostly easterly winds which later changed to south-easterly and north-westerly for short period of time.
“Little rain or drizzle and the cold weather turn counter productive by giving rise to secondary particulate formation. The effective biomass fire counts observed on November 6 was high (3,534) but the wind direction is not favourable for any stubble fire plume intrusion. Slight Improvement in AQI is expected unless the rainfall is too low,” forecast by the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (Safar) said.
According to weather analysts, the wind directions will change to north-westerly from Saturday (November 9), which will again leave the fate of the air quality on wind speed.
On Thursday, the air quality index (AQI) of Noida, as recorded by the Central Pollution Control Board on a scale of 0 to 500, was 328 or ‘very poor’, against a reading of 237 or ‘poor’ a day before. The AQI of Ghaziabad was 325 or ‘very poor’, against 294 a day earlier.
The particle pollutant, or PM2.5, also increased in the past 24 hours due to weather conditions, with volume ranging across four monitoring stations of Noida from 230.76 to 200.35 microgrammes per cubic metres on Thursday against 106.64 to 121.14 Ugm3 a day earlier.
“Due to higher humidity and wind rotation, there was no escape route for pollutants, which led to an increase in pollution levels. The wind directions will change back to north-westerly which is likely to be of moderate speed and may help improve the air quality,” Mahesh Palawat, director, private weather forecasting agency, Skymet, said.
