Pune Air Quality Monitoring Hit as SAFAR Remains Offline for Four Days
Pune, 8th Jun e 2026: The System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), developed by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), a key platform used to monitor air pollution levels in Pune, has remained non-functional for the past four days due to technical issues.
The outage has disrupted access to crucial information on air quality, including the Air Quality Index (AQI) and the concentration of various pollutants across different parts of the city.
With rapid urbanisation, increasing vehicular traffic and rising dust levels, air pollution has emerged as a growing concern in Pune. SAFAR serves as an important source of real-time data, enabling citizens, researchers and environmental organisations to monitor air quality conditions through its website.
The prolonged disruption has affected not only residents seeking daily air quality updates but also researchers, students and environmental experts who rely on the data for analysis and studies. The platform’s data is widely used to track pollution trends, assess environmental impacts and support academic research.
As the website remains inaccessible, daily air quality data is unavailable, hampering ongoing research and analytical work. Environmental experts say that while the technical glitch requires immediate attention, the incident has also highlighted broader limitations in Pune’s air quality monitoring infrastructure.
Although several air quality monitoring stations operate under the Central and State Pollution Control Boards, data from only a limited number of stations is regularly available to the public. Experts believe this restricts comprehensive monitoring and assessment of pollution levels across the city.
Environmental groups, researchers and students have urged authorities to restore SAFAR services at the earliest and ensure uninterrupted access to air quality data, which plays a critical role in public awareness, environmental planning and pollution mitigation efforts.
