Monday, October 26, 2020

Global Air Pollution Maps

Plume Labs' World Air Map is a real-time map of air pollution around the world. The map is driven by data from Flow personal air pollution sensors and from other recognized sources of air quality.

The World Air Map updates every 15 minutes showing air pollution levels around the world recorded by Plume Labs' distributed air quality sensors. Zoom in on a city on the World Air Map and you can view a street-by-street visualization of local air pollution levels. The map also includes a link to view a weekly or monthly forecast of air pollution levels in the chosen city. 

Air pollution causes 1 in 8 deaths worldwide. Which is why Greenpeace has mapped out the world's most polluted hot-spots.


A cluster of coal fired power plants in Mpumalanga in South Africa are responsible for the world's worst air pollution hot-spot. Europe's largest hot-spot is around the Niederaussem coal plant in Germany. This is closely followed by London's air pollution hot-spot caused by car emissions.

Greenpeace used satellite imagery from 1 June and 31 August 2018 to determine NO2 levels around the world. The worst NO2 levels can be found almost exclusively around coal fired power plants and locations with heavy car traffic or other transport.

Greenpeace's NO2 Hotspots interactive map shows you where the worst levels of NO2 air pollution can be found around the world. The map also includes a layer which allows you to view the locations of coal, oil and gas fired power plants. This allows you to see for yourself where pollution hot-spots correlate to the location of power plants.  


Berkeley Earth calculates that 1.6 million people in China alone die from air pollution every year. Berkeley Earth is a non-profit organization who are investigating evidence of climate change. As part of that task they have released a real-time map of air pollution around the world. 

The Real-time Map of Air Pollution shows real-time information on particulate matter air pollution less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5). The data for the Berkeley Earth air pollution map comes from thousands of surface monitoring stations across the globe. The map typically shows data from about two hours behind real-time. As you will probably see when looking at the map large areas of China and India typically experience dangerous levels of air pollution. If you hover over an area on the map you can read an assessment of the current air pollution conditions at that location.

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