Air quality How is the air in Medellín?
See the state of the Aburrá Valley right now: PM2.5, PM10, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide per station, each with its ICA index and category. Run it with the form empty and every station comes back. Free, no login.
Source: SIATAThe Aburrá Valley station by station
SIATA (Sistema de Alerta Temprana de Medellín y el Valle de Aburrá) runs the metropolitan area's reference air-quality network, and this lookup returns the latest reading from every station in it. Each station carries the concentration of every pollutant it measures, the matching ICA index and the category Colombia assigns to it (Buena, Moderada, Dañina a la salud de grupos sensibles and so on): PM2.5 and PM10 as 24-hour averages in micrograms per cubic metre, ozone and carbon monoxide as 8-hour averages, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide over the last hour. You also see which pollutant dominates at each station, meaning the one with the highest index right now. Leave everything blank and all stations come back; a municipality or a station code narrows it to those, and a latitude and longitude return the nearby ones, nearest first, with the distance in kilometres. Coverage is the Medellín metropolitan area, not the rest of the country.
Particulate matter
PM2.5 and PM10 as 24-hour averages, with their ICA index and category at each station.
Gases
8-hour ozone and carbon monoxide, 1-hour nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide, where the station measures them.
Dominant pollutant
Which pollutant has the highest index at each station, the municipality it sits in and the time of the reading.
Common questions
- Do I have to fill anything in?
- No. Run it with the form empty and every station in the Aburrá Valley comes back. The filters are optional: a municipality keeps only that municipality's stations, a station code keeps one, and a latitude and longitude keep the ones near a point (they go together, one without the other filters nothing; the radius in kilometres sets how far to look).
- What do the ICA index and the category mean?
- ICA is Colombia's air quality index. It is computed per pollutant from its concentration and runs from 0 upwards: 0 to 50 is Buena, 51 to 100 Moderada, 101 to 150 Dañina a la salud de grupos sensibles, and beyond that Dañina, Muy dañina and Peligrosa. It is the number the metropolitan authority uses to decide whether to declare alerts and restrictions. The lookup gives you the index, the category and the raw concentration so you can judge for yourself.
- Why does a station carry some pollutants and not others?
- Because they do not all measure the same things. The 26 reference stations measure PM2.5; only some measure PM10, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide or carbon monoxide. A pollutant the station does not measure comes back with no value, not a zero.
- How recent is the data? Is it free?
- Each station carries the time of its own last reading and each pollutant the window it averages, so you can see how fresh it is. The source updates hourly; a station that did not report comes back with no value rather than an invented one. It is free and needs no account, with a cap on lookups per hour from the same connection.
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