Vehicles move on a road amid low visibility due to a layer of smog, in New Delhi
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Delhi and its surrounding cities on Monday experienced one of the season’s worst smog due to a dense fog resulting in a thick blanket of a blackish grey haze that hung over the national capital region for the better part of the day.
By evening the air quality index of Delhi (427), Ghaziabad (444), Noida (437) and Greater Noida (447) were in the 'severe' category, according to the Central Pollution Control Board data. Jahangirpuri in Delhi recorded an AQI of 498, which is the worst among Delhi’s 40 monitoring stations.
The season’s first dense fog layer appeared extending from west Uttar Pradesh to south Punjab across south Haryana, Delhi and north Rajasthan. In many places, visibility dropped between 50 mt and 200 mt. The dense fog, mixed with Delhi NCR’s high air pollution, created the choking smog.
Early morning poor visibility led to large scale flight disruptions in Delhi airport, but the conditions improved later in the day. Over 60 flights were cancelled, five diverted and 250 flights were delayed due to poor visibility conditions, officials said.
According to the India Meteorological Department, dense to very dense fog conditions are very likely to prevail in the morning in isolated pockets of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Dense fog conditions are very likely to prevail in the early hours in isolated pockets of Punjab, Haryana Chandigarh & Delhi on Dec 16th & 17th and in Himachal Pradesh between Dec 16th-18th.
Meanwhile, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yada held a high-level review of air pollution action plans of Ghaziabad and Noida, as part of a series of upcoming review meetings on air pollution for Delhi-NCR.
An expert panel set up by the Commission for Air Quality Management to review air pollution from the transport sector, held its first meeting to discuss vehicular emission sources in Delhi-NCR.
The transport sector is the single most important contributor behind Delhi NCR’s air pollution surge, as per the government data.