Met Office launches Air Quality Data Portal

The Met Office have today launched an Air Quality Data Portal which provides access to detailed air quality data for 17 years from 2003.

Aimed at a variety of users, from academics to government officers and the public, the portal provides wider information on air quality in the UK, beyond the data.

The ‘Overview of Air Quality’ provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject, covering the impact of weather, key pollutants, the Daily Air Quality Index, pollution episodes, and measuring and forecasting air pollution.

There is also a particularly useful User Guide section, which features explanatory videos on how to search for data on the portal, interact with that data on a map and download it in a range of different formats.

The hourly data covers the UK at a resolution of around 10 km, from 1st January 2003 to 31st December 2019. It contains the concentrations of gaseous and particulate air pollutants as well as daily air quality indices and meteorological variables

Data is from the UK Air Quality Reanalysis which has been generated as part of the Clean Air Programme (which itself is led by the Met Office with the Natural Environment Research Council).

The Met Office published a blog post to explain the portal:

Users can visualise and analyse the portal data in map and timeseries format, or download it in a variety of formats to use offline and share with others.

They can search and extract data on different pollutants for specific locations across the UK and time periods, enabling them to obtain statistics and calculate averages.

For example, a science teacher could find out how average levels of sulphur dioxide, produced from the combustion of coal or crude oil, have changed in the UK since 2003. Or a researcher, who is looking into the health impacts of particulate matter from road transport, could establish which areas of the UK have the highest emissions.

Story Maps are available to give users in-depth information about topics including: sources and emissions of UK air pollution, differences between urban and rural air quality, and notable past episodes of poor air quality.

Paul Agnew, Scientific Manager – Air Quality Modelling at the Met Office, said: ‘Our Air Quality Data Portal offers a detailed insight into UK surface air pollution, and how it varies by location and over time.

‘The portal demonstrates our commitment to making atmospheric data publicly available. We hope it will give users a better understanding of air pollution and its impacts, so they can help improve air quality for a heathier future.’

The portal can be accessed here.