Richard's Tech Reviews

Quebec Air Quality and PM2.5 data

Port of Quebec

The closest to PM2.5 realtime data I could easily find to view on the web is a daily average from the Port of Quebec.

https://www.portquebec.ca/en/were-committed/we-take-care-of-our-environment/continuous-air-quality-management

The Port of Quebec is showing PM2.5 values in micrograms per cubic metre µg/m³ (the usual measurement scale).  I don't see any way to download, I think you'd have to scrape values from the "Detailed Data History" chart they provide.

Please make sure that you check the date on the data however.  It looks like it lags by two days in the morning, and by one day in the afternoon; it doesn't appear to ever show the real-time data.

Montreal

Montreal does have full real-time data a few layers down.

But they're using a scale called IQA (Indice de la qualité de l'air), it goes:

• Bon : De 1 à 25
• Acceptable : De 26 à 50
• Mauvais : 51 ou plus

(This is, of course, a different scale from the Canadian AQHI scale.)

For Montreal you can only get readings on the IQA scale, not the underlying measurements.

You can get an overall map

vuesurlesdonnees montreal ca - Indice de la qualité de l'air

If you drill down to a single station it will show PM2.5 in the chart but only as an IQA value, not the underlying value.

To actually access the Montreal real-time data you need to go to the open data site, but you will still only get IQA values for PM2.5, not the actual underlying PM2.5 real measurement.

https://donnees.montreal.ca/dataset/rsqa-indice-qualite-air

Specifically

IQA détaillé par station en temps réel (Quotidien) - CSV

Please don't mistake these PM2.5 values for micrograms per cubic metre µg/m³

In the CSV are PM2.5 values converted to the IQA 1-50+ scale, not the underlying PM2.5 measurement.

Province of Quebec

The Province of Quebec does not appear to offer realtime PM2.5 data.

They have PM2.5 charts, but they are back-looking yearly averages, e.g. Auclair.

https://www.environnement.gouv.qc.ca/air/reseau-surveillance/graphiques.asp

Quebec has hourly measurements but retrospective only.

You can search the open data site for Réseau de surveillance de la qualité de l’air du Québec (RSQAQ) 

https://www.donneesquebec.ca/recherche/dataset?organization=&q=rsqaq

The main dataset is

RSQAQ - Données horaires continues

but the latest data at the time of this writing is from 2022; there is no real time data for the current year.

Here are the details for their PM2.5 measurements:

• PM2.5-TEOM : concentration de particules fines mesurées par un appareil TEOM-SES exprimée en µg/m³. Cet appareil de première génération sous-estime les concentrations par temps froid. L'utilisation de ces données doit tenir compte de ce biais. Elles ne sont pas comparables à celles des autres appareils (BAM et T640).
• PM2.5-BAM : concentration de particules fines mesurées par un appareil Met-One BAM 1020 exprimée en µg/m³
• PM2.5-T640 : concentration de particules fines mesurées par un appareil API T-640 exprimée en µg/m³

See also:
For Canadian AQHI and PM2.5 air quality data, please see blog post Parsing Canadian Air Quality Health Index Data.

Air Quality as an Apple Watch complication

You can get air quality as an Apple Watch complication, if the location is the right size/shape.

In the Modular Compact face, I put AQI (air quality) as the middle complication.

Above is a simulated display, not a live display.
Note the simulated display shows the US AQI scale.

When you are using the Apple Watch in Canada, it will still say AQI, but it will use the Canadian AQHI scale, which runs from 1 to 10+ and uses different colours.

The Canadian colours are:

• 1 light blue to 3 dark blue = low risk
• 4 yellow to 6 orange = moderate risk
• 7 light red to 10 dark red-brown = high risk
• 10+ brown = very high risk

Please note: AQI values on your Apple Watch or iPhone are Internet-provided values for your entire city, not real-time personal values measured directly at your location.  Your Apple devices don't have built-in PM2.5 sensors.  Your local air quality could be much worse than the city value.  The only way to get your personal value is to get a PM2.5 sensor, they cost about $150.

Unlike AQI, Sound Levels are your local personal value as Apple devices can just use their built-in microphones.

iPhone and Apple Watch Weather app

You can also see the AQI (or in Canada the AQHI) in the iPhone Weather app or the Apple Watch Weather app.  Scroll down in the Watch Weather app and the Air Quality should appear immediately after the temperature data.  The data comes from a company called BreezeoMeter, it doesn't come directly from the Canadian government.

Here's the view in the iPhone Weather app.

Tap on Air Quality to go to a detail screen (you do know you can tap on almost any of the Weather app display boxes e.g precipitation and it will take you to a more detail screen?)

BreezoMeter Data and Watch Update Frequency

The Canadian AQHI data come from BreezeoMeter, not directly from the Government of Canada, and the watch face updating is slow. You may have to tap through on the AQI watch complication to get the latest AQHI in the Apple Watch Weather app.

I frequently see the BreezoMeter AQHI on the Apple Watch and in Apple Weather reporting a level one lower (less risk) than the official Government of Canada level, e.g. the Apple Watch will say 4 when the actual official level is 5.

Government of Canada Weather App

If you want official Canadian government AQHI data, you'll need the Government of Canada weather app WeatherCAN.  I think it is iPhone only, not Apple Watch.

You won't often see the weather condition as simply "Smoke" unless that really predominates over other weather activity.

For an individual city, tap the down caret ⏑ on the main screen.

once you open the additional ▼ menu you will see Air quality with the current AQHI value and colour.

Tap that line or the > next to the AQHI value to see the Forecast Maximums as well as any Special Air Quality Statement that may be in effect.

On the detailed screen you can also click for a web table of the AQHI for the past 24 hours, in the upper right across from Observed Conditions click "Past 24 hours", and for a web table of forecast values for the next 24 hours, in the centre right across from Forecast Maximums, click "Next 24 hours".

If you do get the WeatherCAN app, you can set up custom air quality (AQHI) alerts, although I'm not convinced about how quickly you will get alerted.

Disclaimer

Although I am a Government of Canada employee, I have no involvement with the WeatherCAN app.

Parsing Canadian Air Quality Health Index Data

Well, for the moment, more like the start of parsing Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) data.

Air Quality Health Index

The data files are from the Government of Canada open data site open.canada.ca , as part of the MSC (Meteorological Service of Canada) Datamart.

Air Quality Health Index Forecasts - MSC Datamart

For Ontario AQHI, you want to go to

https://dd.weather.gc.ca/air_quality/aqhi/ont/observation/realtime/

You have two options:

• CSV directory
• XML directory

There is zero documentation of the file metadata as far as I can tell, so I basically have to guess.

The CSV directory has a single file for every hour, but it's some kind of rolling update, as the file itself contains multiple hours worth of data.  Column headings are five-letter station names, with useful names like "FEAKO" and "FEVNT".  I don't see any documentation of the mapping between station names and cities.  The columns appear to contain an AQHI value, it looks like over 10 they just put 11 as a maximum.  Yes, "it goes to 11".  (The AQHI scale for display usually runs from 1 to 10+, but you can actually calculate much higher values than 11, it's just a formula.)

The CSV will be the easiest to parse, once you know the station names.

The XML directory contains a file per station per hour, with a single reading in the file.  As a bonus, the XML contains both the station name and the city name, so now I can tell you:

Station FEVNT is Ottawa.

With this info you should be able to use either a spreadsheet or e.g. Jupyter Notebook code to read and display the "realtime" (basically delayed by an hour I would guess) AQHI for the city of your choice.

PM2.5 Sort Of

I could only find realtime AQHI, there was nothing I could find on realtime PM2.5 
Ontario has realtime PM2.5 on its website, e.g. Ottawa Downtown: Hourly Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Readings - Table format (&showType=table)
You'd have to set it to "table" and then scrape the data I guess.

I did a manual extract, just copy and pasting from the website to Apple Numbers, applying conditional highlighting, and then copy-pasting in turn to a Google Drive spreadsheet.

If you want to see what the PM2.5 looked like from June 4, 2023 to June 9, 2023 for Ottawa, here it is

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pVVjOGhYMeJePwDreAFIUEv-EIE8iJjSpfC5VvKwSYw/edit?usp=sharing

If you dig around, there is downloadable data, but it doesn't include realtime PM2.5

Here's what they have available as open data sets...

Data Sets (Ontario Ministry of Environment)

• Air Quality Alert Statistics: Ontario Smog Events from 2015 to 2023
• Atom News Feeds (XML): Current Air Quality Observations, Forecasts and Alerts
• Historical Air Quality Pollutant Data

You may think Historical Air Quality might get you there, but the latest date the input form will accept is December 2021.

Data Sets (Ontario Open Data)

Ontario does post yearly PM2.5 numbers, at the end of each year, it looks like delayed by a year (e.g. we only have 2021 data that was posted in 2022).

Go to the Ontario open data site data.ontario.ca and search air quality and one of the results is

• Annual Air Pollutant Statistics

It looks like it is updated on a yearly basis, not realtime.
So if you're interested in PM2.5 from 2003 to 2021, here you go:

• Fine particulate matter (PM25) statistics