Mumbai’s air quality dips to ‘Very Poor’, low wind speed to blame, says expert

According to the dashboard, at 358, Mazagaon in south Mumbai has the worst AQI, followed by 343 in Chembur, 311 in Malad, 306 in Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) as well as in Andheri. Colaba recorded an AQI of 297, followed by 211 in Bhandup, 156 in Worli and 132 at Borivali.

Mumbai has been recording a minimum temperature below 20 degrees Celsius for the past two weeks with the figures hovering between 15 and 18 degrees Celsius.

Weather experts have said that the current standard of AQI will continue till the end of January.

“The AQI levels have dropped due to low-wind speed. Last week, the overall wind speed paced up a bit which led to dispersion of air particulate matter from the lower atmosphere. Currently, the speed has slowed down due to which the pollutants are lingering in the lower atmosphere for longer hours,” said Gufran Beig, senior scientist and project director at SAFAR.

“Till 2021, the wind reversal in Mumbai used to happen after every 3-4 days, but now this is happening after a gap of 15 days at least, due to which the frequency of high-speed winds blowing from the sea is less and since Mumbai is an island city, it’s air-quality is solely dependent on the wind from the sea,” he said.

In 2022, Mumbai recorded a poor AQI for 18 days between November and December. Also, between December 4 and 18, the city recorded ‘Poor’ to ‘Very Poor’ AQI almost every day. Owing to low vehicular emissions, Mumbai did not record ‘Very Poor’ AQI in 2020. In 2021, only eight such days were recorded.

According to SAFAR’s AQI monitoring chart, an AQI between 0-50 is termed as ‘Good’, between 51-100 is termed ‘Satisfactory’, 101-200 is termed ‘Moderate’, 201-300 is termed ‘Poor’, 301-400 is termed ‘Very Poor’ and beyond 400 AQI is labelled as ‘Severe’.