COVID-19 Impact: Air Pollution In North India Hits 20-Year Low, Finds NASA

Photograph: Suprakash Mishra

New Delhi: The nationwide lockdown, necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, has brought down pollution to an almost unthinkable level.

According to data published by NASA, air pollution in New Delhi and its surrounding regions has dropped to a 20-year low.

Northern India, especially New Delhi and the NCR region, has been hard hit by pollution over the last few tears, with levels reaching very dangerous and hazardous mark during winter.

What NASA has done is to plot the aerosol levels in northern India during the same six-day period of March 31 to April 5 from 2016 to 2020, according to CNN.

“We knew we would see changes in atmospheric composition in many places during the lockdown,” said Pawan Gupta, a Universities Space Research Association scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “But I have never seen aerosol values so low in the Indo-Gangetic Plain at this time of year.”