The overall air quality of the national capital deteriorated from the 'moderate' to 'poor' category on Thursday and is likely to slip to the 'very poor' category by Friday, according to the Centre-run System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR).
"As predicted by SAFAR, the AQI is now forecasted to deteriorate rapidly and slip to very poor category by tomorrow and deteriorate further to the higher end of very poor category by 29th October," says the forecast report by SAFAR.
According to the Central Pollution Control Board, Delhi's air quality index (AQI) stood at 232 at 4 pm on Wednesday based on the 37 monitoring stations installed across the city.
As per SAFAR, stubble burning is one of the main reasons behind the deteriorating condition of air quality in the national capital.
"Effective fire count of stubble burning in the northwest region of Delhi is 656 and its share in PM2.5 is 16% as transport-level winds are northwesterly...," SAFAR said in its bulletin.
"Calm local winds combined with highly favourable transport level winds (North-north westerly) at 900-950 mb height enhance stubble burning related intrusion... Any increase in fire counts in the next 3 days would increase finer particle levels of Delhi," added the bulletin.
As per government agencies, an AQI within the range of 0-5 is regarded as 'good', 51-100 is 'satisfactory', 101-200 is 'moderate', 201-300 is 'poor' and 301-400 is 'very poor' and 401-500 is considered 'severe'.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said that the minimum temperature in Delhi on Thursday is likely to be 14 degrees Celsius while the maximum temperature is predicted to reach 29 degrees Celsius.
The maximum temperature was 28.2 degrees Celsius on Wednesday which was three degrees below normal and the minimum temperature was 14.6 degrees Celsius.
( With inputs from ANI )
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