Reasons decoded: Why Air pollution is choking Delhi?

Delhi’s pollution levels shot up today with most of the monitoring stations recording the city’s air quality in ‘severe’ category, although the 24-hour average remained ‘poor’ as PM 2.5 and PM 10 were nearly three times above the safe limit. The spurt has been caused by calm wind movement and increased humidity. The polluting particles, of microscopic sizes, are not getting dispersed due to the atmospheric phenomenon, an IMD official explained. Although visibility averaged above a kilometer, it will start coming down once the temperature drops to single digit which will be followed by formation of fog and subsequently smog, he said.