Rains improve New Delhi's air quality

Light rains in parts of the national capital on Thursday morning further improved the city’s air quality, officials said.

The air quality index (AQI) in Delhi stood at 136 at 8.47 am which falls under the “moderate” category.

An AQI between 0-50 is considered ‘good’, 51-100 ‘satisfactory’, 101-200 ‘moderate’, 201-300 ‘poor’, 301-400 ‘very poor’ and 401-500 ‘severe’. An AQI above 500 falls in the ‘severe plus’ category.

The AQI at NSIT Dwarka, Anand Vihar, Wazirpur and Vivek Vihar were registered at 201, 170, 170 and 164 respectively.

In the National Capital Region (NCR), Noida (131), Ghaziabad (169) Greater Noida (162), Gurgaon (128) and Faridabad (133), the AQI was in the ‘moderate’ band.

Rains and favourable wind speed on Wednesday had improved Delhi’s air quality which was recorded in the ‘moderate’ category.

In the last 24 hours, the maximum temperature was recorded at 27.4 degree Celsius, two notches above normal and the minimum was recorded at 16.2 degree Celsius, six notches above normal, a senior MeT official said.

The MeT department has forecast generally cloudy sky with light rain and the maximum and minimum temperatures on Thursday are likely to settled at 25 and 16 degree Celsius respectively.