Hourly Air Quality and Meteorological Readings in British Columbia from 1980

British Columbia's Ministry of Environment provides verified hourly air pollutant and meteorological data from monitoring stations across the province. The dataset includes quality-assured readings for pollutants like PM2.5, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide from 1980 to 2024, and meteorological parameters like temperature and wind from 1980 to 2022. All data are reported in Pacific Standard Time.

Use Cases

• Analyze long-term trends in particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10) concentrations based on hourly readings.
• Correlate pollutant levels (e.g., ozone, sulfur dioxide) with meteorological conditions like wind speed and temperature.
• Calculate exceedance counts and annual statistics for regulatory compliance based on validated pollutant data.
• Model air quality health index (AQHI) variations using concurrent pollutant and weather measurements.
• Investigate potential data quality issues for wind speed and direction at specific stations during flagged periods.

Strengths

• Hourly data spans over 40 years for pollutants (1980-2024) and over 40 years for meteorology (1980-2022).
• Includes quality-assured readings for 10 specific pollutants and 6 meteorological parameters.
• Provides annual statistical summaries with percentiles, means, and exceedance counts for key pollutants.

Limitations

• Wind speed and direction data from 2018-2020 at 16 listed stations, and from 2002-2020 at Pine River Hasler, are under investigation and may be invalidated.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Government of British Columbia Ministry of Environment

Collection Method

Data collected from air quality monitoring stations across British Columbia.

Time Range

Pollutant data: 1980 to 2024. Meteorological data: 1980 to 2022.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-17 15:31:48.298942; freshness should be verified.

Geography

British Columbia, Canada