Report · 30 July 2026

Delhi's average AQI today is 121 (Moderate), +36 points vs last year. +3 points of that survive weather correction: the part the city's own pollution produced. Today's reading itself is weather-inflated by about 39 points.

Consecutive days worse

than the same period last year

137 / 210

Days worse this year

of all days measured in 2026

+15.3

Average excess, µg/m³

PM10 above last year, weather removed

Analysis window: 10 AM 29th July to 10 AM 30th July
Baseline: YoY baseline: avg of 23rd Jul - 6th Aug 2025 (same +/-7 days), matched stations

Today's full report

Roughly twelve pages: the verdict on today's air, every monitoring station, the weather versus policy attribution, the full year of de-weathered trends, and the annexures behind each number.

Download the daily reportPDF, 0.6 MB

Narrated in Hindi. Runs 115 seconds.

The evidence

The daily residual: this year minus last year

■ Red: the de-weathered residual, weather removed. Above the zero line, pollution was higher than last year; below the zero line, it was lower.

Each point is a residual: that day's PM10 level minus the same period last year, after the model removes the effect of weather. The shaded band is the uncertainty around each day. Above the zero line means Delhi's air was genuinely worse than last year, and not merely unluckier with the wind; below it means genuinely cleaner. The run begins 30 May 2026.

The findings

What today's report says

Against the world standard

Even after removing the weather's help, Delhi's fine-particle level (PM2.5) is 33 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m³), which is 2.2× the WHO safe limit of 15. The worst weather-corrected hotspot is Wazirpur at 48 µg/m³, which is 3.2× the WHO limit.

How widespread

After weather correction, 30 of 30 comparable stations are worse than last year; the typical station is 3 index points higher. This is a city-wide rise, not a few bad spots.

Honesty box

On days it has never seen, the weather-correction model explains about 38% of the variation, so we treat its outputs as estimates, not exact points. The weather-corrected year-on-year change for fine particles is measured to within roughly ±1 percentage points of sampling error, before model uncertainty. Gas data carries documented unit-inconsistency (peer-reviewed international research, 2025); we lead on the reliable PM2.5/PM10. Percentages compare the same stations in both years; single-day observed spikes are never used as the headline.

PM2.5

Weather-corrected claims allowed (model skill adequate) · PM10: weather-corrected claims allowed (model skill adequate) · NO2: direction reliable (same stations + units both years); absolute levels carry the units caveat · NOx: not part of CPCB's AQI, and the weather model is weak here, so we report observed facts only · SO2: the weather model is too weak to separate weather from policy, so we report observed facts only · CO: the weather model is too weak to separate weather from policy, so we report observed facts only · Ozone: rising ozone chemically signals falling traffic NO2 (standing rule: excluded so it can never be spun as 'transport improved')

Above the world standard today

PM2.5: 41 of 43 stations above the WHO daily limit as observed; even after weather correction, 43 of 43 remain above it. PM10: 43 of 43 stations above the WHO daily limit as observed; even after weather correction, 43 of 43 remain above it. (Weather-model matched panel.)