Delhi's air quality worsens, AQI touches 300 due to highly unfavorable meteorological conditions: CAQM

On Tuesday, May 7, Delhi's quality touched 300 points, a very poor category due to highly unfavorable meteorological conditions, the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) said in a social media post.

Writing on X (earlier Twitter), CAQM said, "Taking note of the prevailing poor air quality scenario in Delhi-NCR, CAQM convened an urgent meeting today. A representative from IMD/IITM apprised that the avg. AQI of Delhi has touched 300 (‘Very Poor’ category) due to highly unfavorable meteorological conditions,"

In its second post, CAQM wrote, "Particulate matter load over the region has increased due to rapid changes in wind direction and speeds due to high convection rate and absolutely dry conditions leading to continued suspension of dust and may not be attributed to any specific local sector,"

All the agencies concerned have been asked to intensify actions for abatement of dust arising from various C&D activities, linear projects, and from roads, pathways/right of ways, and open areas through various dust abatement measures prescribed by CAQM, it further wrote in its 'X' post.

For the last four days, the air quality in the capital was under the 'poor category', above 280. Even till 10 AM today (May 7), the AQI stood at 280 while on Monday (May 6), it was 247 at around 4 PM.

IMD had predicted that there would be no immediate relief in the next three days as Delhi expected to see a dust storm late on Tuesday night.