Delhi air quality shows improvement, Met dept says it will be a foggy Thursday

Delhi’s Air Quality Index was at 348 on Thursday morning, which showed an improvement over Wednesday’s 24-hour average of 361.

Delhi had a good start on Thursday morning with the air quality levels showing signs of improvement.

Delhi witnessed shallow fog on Thursday morning, which the Met department said could persist through the day. (Ravi Choudhary / HT Photo)

The Air Quality Index (AQI) – a measure of the level of pollutants in the air – was recorded at 348 by Central Pollution Control Board at 9.15am. Though still in ‘very poor’ category, it was an improvement over Wednesday’s 24-hour average of 361. Particulate matter — PM2.5 and PM 10 — have also dropped indicating that the air quality could improve further.

The city witnessed shallow fog in the morning, which the Met department said could persist through the day. The visibility was less than 1000m at 8.30am at Palam airport which qualifies as fog.

The sky will, however, remain clear for the next three days. There is also no prediction of rain, Met officials said.

The minimum temperature on Thursday morning was recorded at 15 degree Celsius and the maximum temperature is expected to be at 28.2 degree Celsius. The minimum temperature on Wednesday was 13.2 degree Celsius and the maximum temperature was 27.7 degree Celsius.

Delhi had seen seven continuous days of “severe” air quality last week because of which several emergency measures, including closure of schools, were put into action. It had entered ‘severe’ zone on November 7 and hit its peak of 486 on November 9. The last time Delhi witnessed such a prolonged spell of severe air quality was in November 2016 when the city faced its worst smog in 17 years.