Clearing the Air

Commonwealth Games athletes might just be able to breathe a little easier. Pune’s IITM has been asked to come up with pollution forecasts during the Games.

Commonwealth Games athletes might just be able to breathe a little easier. The Delhi government has asked Pune’s Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) to come up with pollution forecasts during the Games. So next month, nearly 1,000 college and high secondary students from Delhi’s government schools will use Click Counters, calculator-style devices created by IITM that will record the number of vehicles passing around the Games venues. This data will be used by a computer model to predict the pollution. “This real time data will help predict air quality with 95 per cent accuracy,” says Dr Gufran Beig, a scientist with IITM’s System of Air Pollution Forecasting and Research.

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