After rain the good weather ? The weather has played spoilsports for three days for the inhabitants of the region of Delhi, India, plagued by heavy showers. While rainfall of this magnitude in October is an unusual weather event for New Delhians, it has brought some respite to the world’s most polluted capital.
Indeed, New Delhi breathed the purest air since August 31, 2020 on Monday, thanks to the rains of the last three days. According to data from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the city’s 24-hour average air quality index (AQI) was 44 at 4 p.m. It was 48 on Sunday, 56 on Saturday and 55 on Friday.
In India, an AQI between zero and 50 is considered “good”, between 51 and 100 as “satisfactory”, between 101 and 200 as “moderate”, between 201 and 300 as “poor”, between 301 and 400 as ” very poor” and between 401 and 500 as “severe”.
Monday was also the third best day of good air quality of the year. The city had recorded an average 24-hour AQI of 47 on September 16.
The nation’s capital has recorded 128 days of poor air quality (AQI bad, very bad or severe) this year so far.
Many records were broken over the weekend. According to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), New Delhi received the second heaviest rainfall since 2007 on Sunday with 74mm of rainfall.
Rainfall so far this month is about four times normal rainfall (28mm) and three times recorded rainfall (41.6mm) in August, the wettest month of the monsoon season. .
“The amount of rain in the past few days is really not normal, as the monsoon usually ends in September,” says Harjeet Singh, expert on climate impacts, migration and adaptation and strategic manager of Climate Action Network International.
While these showers may have lowered the mercury and improved air quality, they nevertheless caused a significant slowdown in traffic and worsened the congestion in certain parts of the capital. In effect, The duty saw that the heavy rain disrupted the movement of street vendors, rickshaw drivers and pedestrians through the city. On Saturday, the New Delhi traffic police urged motorists to reassess their journeys due to congestion.
The consequences of this record rainfall, however, go far beyond the disruption of the road network, underlines Mr. Singh. “It will affect agricultural production, because normally it is the time of the year when the crops are put out to dry in the fields. These rains mean losses for the farmers,” he says.
For the expert in climate issues, there is no doubt about what lies behind these recent record rains. “Trends in recent years show just how messed up the climate system is. Extreme events are increasingly becoming a reality, we are already witnessing their increased frequency and intensity. It’s just a new normal here. »
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.