Air Quality Index

[queuebit]

I live in the Midwestern part of the United States and we are seeing pollutants from forest fires in Canada often, recently.

Is there a way to pull some standard Air Quality value into the current or forecast data?

Thanks!

[DaveL17]

I live in the midwest as well. I've been pulling air quality data from Open Weather.

[alexander0042]

Great idea, and something I'm looking into! I'm based out of Ottawa, so lots of smoke here too. The trick for this will be finding a source, since I don't want to just pull from another API, as that kind of defeats the point of this project.

My top pick is the HRRR Smoke model. It only covers southern Canada/ US, but it would be a starting point.

[cloneofghosts]

Air Quality forecasts was part of the reason why I created #75 but I can add the AQ specific datasets I found to this issue as well:

AWS

• SILAM. This is what AQICN uses as their main worldwide AQI dataset which I often find isn't great.
• OpenAQ. This has data from different AQ stations worldwide in CSV format so not sure how useful it would be.
• I'll add the link to the list of datasets on AWS that are marked as air quality. Might be others in there that could be worth looking into https://registry.opendata.aws/tag/air-quality/

Non-AWS

• https://ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cams-europe-air-quality-forecasts?tab=overview & https://ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cams-global-atmospheric-composition-forecasts?tab=overview. Seems to be more accurate than the SILAM model and is the AQ model that windy.com and other sites use as their AQ data.

EDIT: There's also RAP Smoke which covers a much larger domain than HRRR smoke but has a resolution of 13.5km. I think I also saw somewhere that there might be a RTMA aerosols model added at some point in the future.

After thinking about things a bit more I have two main questions for when this gets implemented:

1. How would this integrate into the current API? Would the current AQI value be in the currently block and there would be a separate API to get more detailed info or would it be included in the main API. If it's included in the main API there should probably be an AQI block so people can exclude it as needed. Maybe the current AQI could be in the currently section?
2. Which AQI standard would it use? I know a majority of the sites use the US AQI index but there's also the Canadian AQHI, the European AQI index, the Indian AQI index, etc.

[dustinbolton]

@alexander0042 You can get raw air quality data sources for both observation and forecasts for the USA at https://www.airnowapi.org (data files directly at https://files.airnowtech.org/ ) for free. Documentation and free API access comes with the free account.

[alexander0042]

This remains a great idea, and something that I want to look into; however, since it's not part of any of the models that I'm currently ingesting, I think it's out of scope for V2.0. I'm going to put this link here: https://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/products/aqm/, since I think this is the best option for adding this in in the future.

It is worth noting that smoke is added into the V2.0 spec. So while it's not a technical Air Quality number, it's a big part of it, so something for this summer at least.

[cloneofghosts]

Does the model you posted have global coverage or is it for CONUS only? If that model is for CONUS only you'd probably would still need to look for one with global coverage.

The model I see most sites using is CAMS which I posted the link to above but will also post again: https://ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cams-europe-air-quality-forecasts?tab=overview and https://ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cams-global-atmospheric-composition-forecasts?tab=overview

Someone else posted a link to Airnow which has grib files for current Ozone, PM10 and PM2.5 based on current observation data. Not sure of the coverage area but I think it would be the US and parts of Canada? https://www.airnowapi.org/ (data files directly at https://files.airnowtech.org/ )

EDIT: I took a look at the current datasets in AirNow and while it would be nice to add the data seems pretty limited. The data seems to be in AQI instead of pollutant concentrations so is not as useful as it would seem

[Tarun80]

With Pirate Weather being based on Dark Sky, which Apple was using. Could also base a few other things on what they use in their Weather app.

For Air Quality (and some maps as well) they use several things, but here's the data sources.

For Air Quality, they refer to the Breezometer - which even having the maps in Pirate Weather would be awesome.

Hope this helps!