In spite of being warned by a green court and environment experts, stubble burning in the states of Punjab and Haryana have reached all time-high. This continuous activity has degraded the air quality to a massive extent in Delhi-NCR region.
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In fact, present weather conditions are adding to the pollution woes in the national capital. As per weathermen, the dry and cold northwesterly winds from Punjab and Haryana will continue to blow for 24 to 48 hours over the national capital region, but the speed of these winds will be light to very light.
Thereafter, the winds will change their direction and start blowing from southwest/southeast direction. With this, the humidity levels will pace up over Delhi-NCR. In addition to this, minimum temperatures are also decreasing, due to which mist and haze are likely to persist for long duration during the morning hours.
"Dust and smoke particles will thereby mix with this mist and haze that will form a thick blanket of smog over the region, increasing the pollution levels," said Mahesh Palawat, Vice President-Meteorology, Skymet Weather. Consequently, people will complain of breathing problems towards morning and evening hours.
As per findings of SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research), 9 out of 10 monitoring stations in Delhi have recorded ‘very poor’ air quality, with PM2.5 ranging between 313 and 366 units. The national permissible limit for PM2.5 is 60 and PM10 is 100.
Also Read: Despite NGT Ban On Stubble Burning, Delhi’s Air Acrid
So in a nutshell, in the past 24 hours, the air quality has worsened with index value of 344 in Delhi, 363 in Noida and 318 in Gurugram. On Tuesday, the AQI over these mentioned three places were 309, 315, and 345, respectively.
Moreover, if we talk about Ghaziabad, the AQI was worse than post-Diwali and was termed as ‘severe’ by the Central Pollution Control Board. In the past 24 hours, the AQI in Ghaziabad was 425.
According to EPCA (Environment Pollution, Prevention and Control Authority), the state authorities of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh were supposed to keep a check on stubble-burning, as the toxic smoke released from such activity, along with wind speeds, impacts the air quality in Delhi-NCR.
IMAGE CREDIT: Millennium Post
Any information taken from here should be credited to skymetweather.com