Smoke and Air quality data and maps

[jboy210]

The following links provide up to date information on smoke and air quality.

Fire and Smoke Map - this is the partnership of NOAA, Forest Service, and private partners consolidating air monitoring data and fire mapping data.

One of those partners is Purple Air, which feeds the information from their homeowner based Air quality detectors into Airnow. You can get their customer's uploaded information at https://www.purpleair.com/map .

 

[ecarfan]

Purpleair.com is an extremely useful website which provides a very granular view of AQI readings. While the data is derived from privately owned detectors, the data is accessible to anyone. Here’s what the map looks like in my area https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1/mAQI/a10/cC0#1/24.5/-30 (in the map key at the lower left, turn of the “Inside Sensors” reading to just view data from outdoor sensors)

 

[SilverSp33d3r]

I Work for one of the largest utilities in the country. To manage our field crew activities we use Home Page | AirNow.gov
Seems to be reliable and accurate for AQI especially with regards to the PM 2.5 dataset.

EDIT - Just realized the OP already shared this page.

 

[SMAlset]

Saw this article on "Understanding PurpleAir vs. AirNow.gov Measurements of Smoke Pollution". Thought it might answer some questions people might have.

Understanding PurpleAir vs. AirNow.gov Measurements of Wood Smoke Pollution

"....With the help of Brett Singer, an air quality scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Arian Dybwad, CEO of Purple Air, and Michelle Wayland at the EPA, I was able to piece together what’s going on...."

"To apply the LRAPA formula, click the word “None” and change it to “LRAPA”. When you do this, you’ll see numbers that are on the same scale as AirNow. Without using LRAPA conversion, you are comparing apples to oranges. Please note that LRAPA is specifically a correction factor for areas where PM 2.5 particles are dominated by wood smoke. You should not use LRAPA in other circumstances."

Did not know that! Very informative article with nice comparisons.

 

[ecarfan]

Yes using the LRAPA setting at purpleair.com makes it more accurate for smoke-related pollution. It lowers the numbers considerably.

 

[jboy210]

Saw this article on "Understanding PurpleAir vs. AirNow.gov Measurements of Smoke Pollution". Thought it might answer some questions people might have.

Understanding PurpleAir vs. AirNow.gov Measurements of Wood Smoke Pollution

"....With the help of Brett Singer, an air quality scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Arian Dybwad, CEO of Purple Air, and Michelle Wayland at the EPA, I was able to piece together what’s going on...."

"To apply the LRAPA formula, click the word “None” and change it to “LRAPA”. When you do this, you’ll see numbers that are on the same scale as AirNow. Without using LRAPA conversion, you are comparing apples to oranges. Please note that LRAPA is specifically a correction factor for areas where PM 2.5 particles are dominated by wood smoke. You should not use LRAPA in other circumstances."

Did not know that! Very informative article with nice comparisons.

Nice article.

I have ordered a Purple Air sensor and look forward to adding a dot to the map. And thanks to the article I understand the biases in the product. Now, if it just ships. Not surprisingly they are back ordered.

 

[SMAlset]

Nice article.

I have ordered a Purple Air sensor and look forward to adding a dot to the map. And thanks to the article I understand the biases in the product. Now, if it just ships. Not surprisingly they are back ordered.

Interesting you ordered one. Our area doesn’t have many at all on the map and had talked to my husband about getting one too. I’ve been watching the readouts for around the bay, did so with last year’s fires. I know people in Leilani Estates and when Kilauea erupted there was checking air quality on the Big Island. So have found it a useful product.

I like that the article said that the fire/smoke airnow app takes into account that this is smoke particles and you don’t need to make an adjust while checking it.

 

[bmah]

Interesting you ordered one. Our area doesn’t have many at all on the map and had talked to my husband about getting one too. I’ve been watching the readouts for around the bay, did so with last year’s fires. I know people in Leilani Estates and when Kilauea erupted there was checking air quality on the Big Island. So have found it a useful product.

I like that the article said that the fire/smoke airnow app takes into account that this is smoke particles and you don’t need to make an adjust while checking it.

Possibly of interest also (some overlap with the article linked upthread):

Low-Cost Home Air Quality Monitors Prove Useful for Wildfire Smoke

Disclaimer: I happen to work at LBL, but in a completely unrelated area. The lab has a number of PurpleAir sensors on site, but as far as I am aware LBL does not endorse this or any other air quality monitoring product.

I bought and installed a PurpleAir sensor at home earlier this summer (literally a few weeks before the big wildfires hit). It seems to be working well, in that most of the time it seems fairly close to the numbers of surrounding sensors. (It actually has two detectors, and the number reported on the map is a 10-minute sliding-window average of the two detectors.) I ordered an indoor sensor as well but they're on backorder.

For data geeks, the PurpleAir exports a REST-ish endpoint on its local network interface, where you can pull a blob of JSON. Super-easy to plot stuff with a Telegraf/Influx/Grafana stack. (They have an API on their servers as well.)

Bruce.