Global Air Quality So Far in 2017: A Zoom-In on the UK

This week, OpenAQ had the pleasure of participating in a debate on UK urban air quality targets held by The Foundation for Science and Technology in London. It was a stimulating discussion — and especially interesting timing with a court battle to follow the next day, regarding whether the UK government would be allowed to delay releasing new air quality plans until after the general election (The answer the following day was a resounding no). A write-up of the event will be shared here (we’ll update this link when it’s up).

In preparation for the debate, we stuck our toe into the sea of UK-based data aggregated into our system from Defra. Below is a simple analysis we made of recent data, and the real hope is that it spurs some of you lovely data-driven readers to dig in even more. If you do, share your work with us, and we’ll highlight it to the rest of the community!

Comparing Recent NO2 Levels Across Major Cities

From 1 January to 30 March 2017, London air quality stations recorded NO2 levels above the WHO Hourly Guidelines for almost 50% of all measurements aggregated from the city into the OpenAQ system, comparable to Delhi and Kolkata. The figure below shows comparisons with other major cities over the same time interval.

Data, in aggregate, accessed from openaq.org, and all UK sources are from Defra. To see individual data sources for other countries, visit openaq.org. Please note, as with all real-time air quality data, these data may not be validated by their source. This graph was created by a simple analysis, involving this query to the OpenAQ API: https://api.openaq.org/v1/measurements?parameter=no2&date_from=2017-01-01&date_to=2017-03-30&city=[city name]

London is Not the Only City Experiencing High NO2 Levels in the UK

Over the same time period, the highest 1% of NO2 station readings across the UK — those reading 111 ug/m^3 or higher — came from 50 different cities. Of course, this analysis gives unfair weight to locations with more readings produced over the time interval, but the point is: In very recent data, it is clear NO2 is not just a London problem. Relatedly, at the beginning of April, an informative piece looking at longer-term NO2 levels, especially near schools, was published as a joint investigation by the Guardian and Greenpeace.

Data, in aggregate, accessed from openaq.org, and all UK data sources are from Defra. To see individual data sources, visit openaq.org. Please note, as with all real-time air quality data, these data may not be validated by their source. This graph was created by a simple analysis, involving this query to the OpenAQ API: https://api.openaq.org/v1/measurements?parameter=no2&date_from=2017-01-01&date_to=2017-03-30&country=GB&order_by=value&sort=desc

On Real-Time Air Quality Data Access in the UK

If you look at the all-time most requested locations for air quality data in the OpenAQ platform, the UK is on top! But our platform currently doesn’t have a very robust way to aggregate real-time air quality data from Defra.

People are interested in UK air quality data. The pie chart shoes countries receiving the most data requests to the OpenAQ platform. Data source: Keen.io

Currently, we scrape the data, which is not an ideal method to reliably access any type of data. But thanks to our community, we recently learned about a couple of programmatic methods to potentially ingest this information. To learn if they would meet our system’s need, we’re now looking for a contact at Defra. Do you have suggestions? Read more about the specifics in this GitHub issue.

Have you done a cool analysis of air quality data? Share it with us, so we can share it with our community! Tweet at us, join our Slack channel, or email us at: info@openaq.org.