It was a chilly morning in Delhi on Sunday with the minimum temperature dropping to 11.7 degrees Celsius, four degrees below normal.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted that there will be fog and mist in the morning which will clear later in the day.
On Saturday, the maximum temperature at the Safdarjung observatory — considered the official reading for the city — was 30.8 degrees Celsius. The minimum temperature was 13 degrees Celsius, three degrees below the season’s normal.
This October was the coldest in 58 years.
“As we move into November we can expect a further fall in night temperatures,” Kuldeep Shrivastava, head, regional weather forecasting centre, said, referring to a minimum temperature of 11.7 degrees C recorded until 6.30 am on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Delhi’s air quality remained in the “very poor category” with an AQI (Air quality index) of 367, according to the data recorded by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) at 7 am. This is the same as the average 24-hour AQI on Saturday. Scientists said air quality is unlikely to improve on Sunday.
On a scale of 0 to 500, an AQI between 301 and 400 is considered very poor and could have serious health impacts, especially on those working outdoors and children.
According to the air quality early warning system under the ministry of earth sciences, the air quality will continue to be in the “very poor” category on November 1 and 2.
“The unusual increase in fire counts is observed over Punjab (approx 4,266 fire counts) yesterday (October 30), which is highest of this season and impacted the air quality over Delhi/NCR. Higher wind speed and better ventilation index are favourable for improvement in air quality,” it said on Saturday.
Farm fires contributed to 32% of PM 2.5 (particulate matter with diameters less than 2.5 micrometres) load in Delhi on Saturday.
Ambala, Baghpat, Bahadurgarh, Bhiwadi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Gurugram and other places in northwest India also recorded very poor air quality on Sunday morning.
IMD scientists said while the average wind speed during Saturday touched 18kmph, it did not clean up the air as expected.
On Friday and Saturday, the number of crop stubble burning incidents spotted in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana was the highest this season so far, which could have contributed to the air continuing to remain critical.
“As per IMD’s satellite monitoring on Friday, in Punjab alone, there were 4,266 farm fire spots, while in Haryana there were 155 farm fires. On Saturday, too, the number of red dots, denoting fires, were over 3,000. Even though we had good wind speed and better ventilation index, the direction of the wind was from north-west, which brought with it smoke from the fires,” VK Soni, head of IMD’s Environment Monitoring Research Centre, said.
He said the wind speed is expected to remain high on Sunday, which will keep the AQI levels in the upper ends of the “very poor” zone.
