New Delhi: Pollution levels across north India are at a 20-year low for this time of the year, said scientists from the US-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as India enters the fifth week of a nationwide lockdown. “We knew we would see changes in atmospheric composition in many places during the lockdown.
But I have never seen aerosol values so low in the Indo-Gangetic Plain at this time of year," said Pawan Gupta, scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Scientists analysed the aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere over the country from 31 March to 5 April periods for each year from 2016 to 2020 using MODIS data from NASA’s Terra satellite.