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Full catalog/NWS NAQFC PDS
NWS NAQFC PDS·dataset

US air quality forecast for ozone and smog (NOAA)

NOAA National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC) Regional Model Guidance
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. Forecasts of how bad the air will be, focusing on ground-level ozone and fine particle pollution (PM2.5, the tiny soot and smoke particles that harm lungs).

How it's made. NOAA generates this guidance by coupling weather models with atmospheric chemistry models that track pollutant emissions over time.

How & where you'd use it. It powers public air quality alerts so people with asthma or heart conditions, and the general public, know when to limit time outdoors.

What's measured

aws-pdsagricultureclimatedisaster responseenvironmentalmeteorologicalweather

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC) dataset contains model-generated air quality (AQ) forecast guidance from three different prediction systems. The first system is a coupled weather and atmospheric chemistry numerical forecast model, known as the Air Quality Model (AQM). It is used to produce forecast guidance for ozone (O3) and particulate matter that is less than or equal to 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5). Prior to May 14, 2024, AQM predictions were derived using the EPA’s Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model, driven by meteorological fields from NCEP’s operational weather forecast models, specifically the North American Mesoscale Model (NAM; prior to 20 July 2021) and the Global Forecast System (GFS; beginning 20 July 2021). Since May 14, 2024, AQM guidance has been produced by a unique application within the community-based Unified Forecast System (UFS). The core model components in this application are derived directly from the fully online-coupled UFS-based weather and CMAQ-based chemistry models. In addition, it incorporates information related to chemical and particle source emissions as it integrates forward in time, including anthropogenic chemical emissions provided by the EPA, fire emissions from NOAA/NESDIS, and airborne particles generated by human activities and those predicted to be generated by wind-driven erosion and biosphere at ground level. The NCEP NAQFC AQM output fields in this archive include model raw and bias-corrected predictions dating back to 1 January 2020, all generated by the contemporaneous operational AQM

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).