Two days after the demolition of Supertech twin towers, the visibility seems to have dropped across Noida. According to the forecast, the air quality is currently at the lower-end of moderate levels, and likely to remain so over the next two days.
“Overall, the air quality is moderate, but the visibility might have plummeted due to the drop in wind speed across the region. As a result, the prevailing dust particles in the air may not disperse as well as they generally would,” Dr BS Murthy, who leads SAFAR team at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) Pune, told News18.
According to SAFAR (System of Air Quality Forecast and Weather Forecasting and Research) maintained by IITM, Pune, the air quality index (AQI) was reported at around 106 for Noida (moderate) as well as Delhi, while it was much better at 98 for Gurgaon (satisfactory).
The health advisory suggests very sensitive people to consider reducing longer/heavy exertion and any heavy outdoor work, while no major health risk is expected for general public.
The current analysis shows the dust particles less than the size of 2.5 micrometer now contribute nearly 64% to the PM10 in the region. Apart from calm winds, the temperature too remains moderate at around 34-36 degree Celsius, and mixing layer height is at 2-2.5km which is another meteorological factor that affects air pollution.
“The forecast suggests, that peak wind speed is likely to remain between 8-16 km/hour for the next two days, till about September 1, so the air quality index may continue to remain moderate,” added Murthy.
According to the meteorologists, the visibility might have also worsened, due to the moisture in the air, following intermittent rains across various parts of the National Capital Region (NCR) on Monday. The hygroscopic chemical constituents in aerosols, like Sulfates, nitrates and some organic substances tend to absorb water vapors and increase in size, obscuring the sky’s clarity. The dust emanating from the demolition might also have had a role to play.
Once the tallest buildings, the 100-metres high illegal residential twin towers were razed to the ground on Sunday, creating wide plumes of dust and debris, and nearly 80,000 tonnes of rubble. The demolition – one of the biggest in scale conducted in the country – was completed within 9 seconds using 3,700 kg of explosives. People from the nearby buildings were evacuated for safety purpose, while many others left temporarily to protect them from any health repercussions due to the toxic air.
As the air remains hazy, the low cloudy conditions persisting over the region are also likely to contribute to the conditions over the next few days, with slight chance of drizzle at isolated places. While heavy rains could help settle down the dust, light rain or drizzle tends to worsen it.
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