Richard's Tech Reviews

France air quality map

This is what I was able to figure out, there are multiple different sites all with different top level domains.

The indicator is called L’indice ATMO.

Map

There's a high-level map at

https://www.atmo-france.org/

and a more detailed map at

https://www.atmo-france.org/indiceatmo

L'indice ATMO

The colour scale goes from light blue (cyan) to purple.

Scale from L'indice ATMO - Quels sont les polluants pris en compte ?

Levels are in micrograms per cubic metre µg/m³ .
Note that PM2.5 and PM10 have different thresholds for each level.

Regional Associations

Data for the map are drawn from many regional associations, which have their own websites (and sometimes their own maps and data download).

Les Associations Agréées Surveillance Qualité de l'Air - AASQA
https://www.lcsqa.org/fr/aasqa

Country-wide Alerts

« Carte des épisodes de pollution »

https://www.lcsqa.org/fr/vigilance-atmospherique/episodes/carte

Note this is using an alert scale, coloured from grey to red; it's not the same scale or colours as the indice ATMO.

Data

Data is available from multiple different sites, including the national Atmo France site, where you search the map for available datasets

https://map.atmo-france.org/

and I guess a site called Geodair (stylised GeO D'air) ?, although I have to say their map doesn't accord with the main Atmo France map

https://www.geodair.fr/donnees/consultation

Individual regional air quality association websites also often have data download options.

Portugal air quality map

The Portuguese environmental agency is

Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente (APA)
https://www.apambiente.pt/

The Portuguese for "air" is "ar", the air quality measurement is called QualAR.

Air Quality Map

There's a map at

https://qualar.apambiente.pt/indices

You can also download a QualAR app for iOS or Android.

Of note, in addition to PM2.5 pollution from wildfires, Portugal also gets PM10 pollution from sand dust blown in from the Sahara.

Data

Data can be downloaded from

https://qualar.apambiente.pt/downloads

Ontario air quality data including PM2.5

Ontario has realtime PM2.5 on its Pollutant Concentrations web page.

http://www.airqualityontario.com/history/summary.php

To get an chart for a specific city and pollutant, you need to click on the rather small chart icon next to the pollutant value.

e.g. Ottawa Downtown: Hourly Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Readings - Chart format (&showType=chart)

You'd have to set it to "table" and then scrape the data I guess.
Click the Table checkmark in the centre-right of the interface and then click the Refresh Page button.

e.g. Ottawa Downtown: Hourly Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Readings - Table format (&showType=table)

For whatever reason, it will only show three days of data at a time.

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

Nova Scotia PM2.5 air quality data

Nova Scotia has a small number of air quality sensors monitoring PM2.5 concentrations.

Go to

https://novascotia.ca/nse/airdata/

Then in the upper left menu select "Current Measurements" and then "All Stations".

You can download from the page, but it will only give you that single one-hour snapshot.

A Week of Station Data in a Chart

You can drill down to a week's worth of data in a ridiculously convoluted set of steps.

1. Click an individual station name, e.g. Sydney
2. On the resulting page, click on Online

3. On the resulting page, deselect (unclick) all the measurements you DON'T want to see on the chart, and then click the link for the measurement you do want to see

Open Data: Not Real-Time, Choose the Right Sensor

You can find air quality data in the NS open data site.

https://data.novascotia.ca/browse?q=air%20quality&sortBy=relevance

including hourly PM2.5 data by station

https://data.novascotia.ca/browse?q=pm2.5&sortBy=relevance

They are using different sensors, TEOM and BAM.
The TEOM sensors appear to have stopped in 2008.
Select BAM sensors for data to the end of 2021.

https://data.novascotia.ca/browse?q=pm2.5%20bam&sortBy=relevance

So for e.g. Sydney, if you want recent data look at Sydney BAM/T640 data, not the Sydney TEOM data.

https://data.novascotia.ca/Environment-and-Energy/Nova-Scotia-Provincial-Ambient-Fine-Particulate-Ma/7mhg-zhcg

As a reminder, they are doing a common provincial thing which is the data are from a year before the update, e.g. the November 18, 2022 data for Sydney run only until the end of December 2021.

To get the data, click Export in the upper right.

Daily PM2.5 data from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Air Monitoring website

New York State provides real-time hourly PM2.5 data in micrograms per cubic metre µg/m³ for twenty-three air quality monitoring stations across the state.

http://www.nyaqinow.net/

Select Reports and then Station Report.

The default settings are ok - Grid and Daily.
DO NOT select Export Excel on this screen.  It will not give you a usable Excel format (it's maybe just producing HTML, I think it's an error unless it's some sort of XML format).

Select the station you want.
Note that not all stations have PM2.5 data. See the bottom of the post for the list of twenty-three PM2.5 stations.

Select the starting day.  Ignore the ending day; no matter what you select it will only give you a day's worth of data.

When you click Generate Report, you will get a screen with a table of hourly measurements, and some options across the top.
In the Export pulldown menu, select CSV, and then click on the blue Export link.

And that's basically it for getting a day's worth of realtime PM2.5 data from a single station.

If you want a one-hour snapshot of PM2.5 across all the stations, instead select Dynamic Tables from the left-hand menu, then select PM2.5, then select Export Text.

Export Text will give you a vertical bar | separated set of values, you should be able to import into a spreadsheet by telling it that a vertical bar is the delimiter rather than a comma.

Incidentally, either of these approaches will enable you to get realtime data from Whiteface Base (the base of Whiteface Mountain, New York), the closest monitoring station to Ottawa.

This is different from the US EPA data for Whiteface Base which is not real-time (the latest approved EPA data from the AirData map are at least two months old).

PM 2.5 Station List

• Albany County HD
• Buffalo
• Buffalo Near Road
• CCNY
• Eisenhower Park
• Fresh Kills West
• IS 143
• IS 52
• IS 74
• Maspeth
• Newburgh
• Pinnacle
• Port Richmond
• PS 274
• PS 314
• Queens College
• Rochester Near Rd
• Rockland County
• Suffolk County
• Tonawanda II
• White Plains
• Utica
• Whiteface Base