Gurugram air improves significantly due to wind

Gurugram’s air quality improved significantly on Wednesday. Favourable winds helped the city bring its quality down from “severe” a day earlier to “poor”, according to the air quality index (AQI) published by the central pollution control board (CPCB).

The city’s air was the cleanest in the national capital region (NCR) with neighbouring Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad recording “very poor” air.On Wednesday, the AQI read of 288 (‘poor’), down from 427 (‘severe’).

Experts attributed the improvement to change in wind direction and wind speed, which helped disperse pollutants that had accumulated over the past week.

Gurugram’s AQI had stayed in the ‘severe’ zone for four consecutive days since November 7.

“At the moment, winds are coming from the north and the north-east of Delhi. Gurugram lies south west of Delhi, right in the path of these winds, which have blown a fair bit of pollutants away that had collected because of stagnant weather over the past few days,” said Sachin Panwar, a city-based independent air quality scientist.

The concentration of ultrafine particulate matter having a diameter of 2.5 microns or less (PM 2.5), the city’s primary pollutant, was 272µg/m³ on Wedensday, as per the CPCB’s air quality monitor at Vikas Sadan in Sector 11 — down from 428µg/m³ on Tuesday. Similar improvements were seen across two other official air quality monitoring stations in Gurugram, which recorded ‘very poor’ air.

However, Sector 51 continues to record higher pollution levels, with an average PM2.5 concentration of 331ug/m3 on Wednesday. This was also the only official monitor in Gurugram to record ‘very poor’ air on Wednesday, with a daily AQI reading of 331.

According to the early air quality warning system for Delhi-NCR, the air quality is likely to improve marginally but remain in the ‘very poor’ category on Thursday. The air quality is expected to deteriorate marginally and remain in the upper end of ‘very poor’ category on Friday.

On Wednesday, the city recorded a maximum temperature of 29.9 degrees Celsius, while the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Celsius. Both maximum and minimum temperatures are expected to hover in a similar range on Thursday. As per the weekly IMD forecast, clear skies will prevail on Thursday.

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