visakhapatnam the andhra university au has decided to deploy an ambient air quality monitoring vehicle and set up an automatic weather station with a 30metre long meteorological tower in its campusthe department of science and technology has recently sanctioned rs 8 crore to the varsity under the fund for improvement of science and technology infrastructure scheme a part of these funds will be used to procure the ambient air quality mobile van and the weather stationthe automatic weather station will consist of a wind speed sensor direction sensor temperature and humidity sensor barometric pressure and rain gaugespeaking to toi au vicechancellor prof g nageswara rao said that the mobile van would monitor the air quality in the universitys vicinity including the industrial area the van fitted with computers and software for local acquisition system would pave way for continuous online monitoring the airquality monitoring mobile van will have a sulphur dioxide analyser nitrogen oxide analyser ozone analyser pm 25 analyser pm 10 analyser multigas calibrator system and a gas sampling system the meteorological tower would comprise a solar radiation sensor data logger and collection system infrared radiometer soil temperature and soil moisture probesthe central pollution control board cpcb had earlier identified visakhapatnam as a nonattainment city an action plan is currently being prepared to bring air quality standards within the normal range a nonattainment city is one which does not meet the national ambient air quality standards naaqs a total of 102 cities across the country have been identified as nonattainment cities in andhra pradesh vijayawada visakhapatnam guntur nellor and kurnool fall in the listthe proposed air quality monitoring system as well as the meteorological tower are expected to help officials understand the pollution levels in the city and draft a better plan the meteorlogical tower will help understand weather systems