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Pirate-Weather / pirateweather

Code and documentation for the Pirate Weather API
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Air Quality Index #92

Open queuebit opened 11 months ago

queuebit commented 11 months ago

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 commented 11 months ago

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

alexander0042 commented 11 months ago

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 commented 11 months ago

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

Non-AWS

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 commented 11 months ago

@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 commented 2 months ago

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 commented 2 months ago

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 image