For the second time in the last two weeks, the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) mobile application ‘Sameer’, which provides real-time data about the Air Quality Index (AQI) of all cities in India, stopped working on Saturday due to “server issues” even as Mumbai woke up to foggy skies.

“At present, upgradation of the system is ongoing, therefore the servers are down. Server maintenance works are usually taken up on weekends and holidays when traffic is low on our sites. This is just a temporary glitch and it will be corrected soon,” Avinash Dhakane, CEO and member secretary of Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB), told The Indian Express.

The Sameer mobile application is a single platform where integrated AQI data along with bulletins are made available for citizens. Between December 31 and January 1, the app had temporarily stopped working after facing server-related issues.

“There are some issues with the server as a result of which the application has stopped working temporarily. We have informed the CPCB and work on restoring the servers is underway,” an official from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s environment department said on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, a weather expert said that Mumbai’s AQI has worsened owing to climatic and manmade factors. “At present, the city’s AQI has dipped below the normal levels because of the climatic conditions. Mumbai’s weather is fluctuating abruptly and today the temperature has also seen a dip, and being a coastal city, any minute change in the climate is going to have adverse effect on the AQI pattern,” Gufran Beig, chair professor of National Institute of Advanced Sciences (NIAS), told The Indian Express on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, the India Meteorology Department (IMD) showed the minimum temperature hovering below 20 degrees. On Saturday morning, Mumbai’s minimum temperature stood at 18.4°C, 1.4°C above the normal range.

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