Air Quality Awareness Week April 27-May 1
April 27 to May 1 is Air Quality Awareness Week.
National Weather Service (NWS), in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), produces forecast guidance out to 48 hours for predicted surface ozone concentrations and smoke throughout the lower 48 states (CONUS). State and local air quality forecasters, for some 300 communities across the US, interpret NWS guidance, along with pollution monitoring data and other inputs, to provide next-day alerts of impending poor air quality.
NOAA NWS’ air quality forecast guidance is expanding its coverage to include all 50 states, and to provide quantitative particulate matter predictions. NWS is currently testing experimental versions of the Smoke Forecast Tool over Alaska, and will soon do this for Hawaii as well. Our NWS Air Quality Program goal is to provide the United States with ozone, particulate matter and other pollutant forecasts with enough accuracy and advance notice to allow people to take action to prevent or reduce adverse effects.
For more information, visit http://www.weather.gov/airquality/
To view digital air quality forecast guidance, visit http://www.weather.gov/aq/
To view the EPA's collaborative air quality web portal, visit http://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm?action=airnow.main
For EPA's Air Quality Awareness Week fliers (pdf), visit http://www.epa.gov/airnow/airaware/resources.html
For the Air Quality Index educational toolkit for weathercasters, visit http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=weathercast.main
For Illinois EPA's Air Quality Index forecast page, visit http://www.epa.state.il.us/air/aqi/index.html
For the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's Smog Watch forecast page, visit http://www.in.gov/apps/idem/smog/
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