Delhi sees ‘good’ and ‘severe’ air days this year in October

The best AQI recorded in October this year was 44 on October 10, while the worst was 397 on October 29. October this year recorded seven ‘very poor’ air days beginning from October 24 onwards. In contrast, the rainfall towards the end of the month last year meant that the city recorded no ‘very poor’ air days in October last year.

The AQI on Monday was 392, in the ‘very poor’ category. A forecast issued by the Air Quality Early Warning System on Monday said that the AQI is likely to deteriorate and remain in the ‘very poor’ to ‘severe’ category on Tuesday. The contribution of stubble burning to PM2.5 levels in Delhi was 22% on Monday, according to the SAFAR forecasting system.

At 8 pm on Monday, the 24-hour average AQI at 20 out of 35 monitoring stations in the city was in the ‘severe’ category, going by data from the CPCB dashboard. At 14 monitoring stations, the AQI was ‘very poor’, while it was ‘poor’ at one station.