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AQI and AirNow 101: How AirNow Works
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…and what happens when it DOESN’T
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In the beginning, there is air
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…and there’s always NOW
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•Inform•Educate•Motivate•Involve
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What are we really trying to do?
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•Air quality measurements•Air quality forecasts•Air Quality Index•You!
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AirNow’s Basic Building Blocks
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•Agencies deliver hourly data and forecasts
•STI’s DMC collects, QAs, and creates products
•Products go all over
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Very basic view of how it works
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•Reporting Areas•Zip Code associations•QA/QC criteria•Surrogates, e.g. NowCast
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Concepts we created along the way…
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• Conceptually similar to metro areas• Defined by a group of air quality monitors
• Only those monitors go into the AQI!• Submitting agency chooses
• Can also be defined for a forecast• Possible to have a forecast reporting area
without corresponding AQI reporting area, and vice versa
• What doesn’t work• Especially during fires, we’ve seen
monitors that were not attached to reporting areas and were reading high
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Reporting Areas
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• Log into AirNow Tech• Make sure your
monitors are assigned to reporting areas as verification sites
• If they are not, they will not be part of AQI calculations and may misrepresent air quality in your area
• Think about new reporting areas
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Reporting Areas - homework
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• AirNow.gov allows the public to type in a zip code• There is a master file of zip code to reporting area
associations• A zip code may currently be associated with only ONE
reporting area• New zip codes must be processed by the DMC staff at STI• What doesn’t work: if a zip code is not associated with a
reporting area, the user gets nothing. This was a very common issue during the CA fires
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Zip Code Associations
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•Let [email protected] know if there are any ZIP codes that:
• Are not associated with ANY reporting area• Are connected to the WRONG reporting area• Are brand new and should be associated with a
reporting area
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Zip Code Associations - Homework
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• AirNow is famous for its robust realtime QA/QC routine• Data is automatically checked against criteria such as rate of
change, min, max, and values may be set for each hour• There are two ranges – suspect and severe• Suspect data is flagged, but used. Severe data is flagged for
human follow-up and is not used.• What doesn’t work: If a site has no QA/QC criteria at all,
any data will be accepted. A site in Northern VA was reporting an AQI of over 64,000!
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QA/QC Criteria
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•Check your QA/QC criteria!
•Select buddy sites
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QA/QC Criteria - Homework
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Any Questions?
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