WEATHER · AIR QUALITY
Air Quality
Air quality painted worldwide \u2014 fine particulate pollution (PM2.5), the smoke, dust and haze particles most closely linked to health harm and the pollutant that usually drives a high air-quality index. Green where the air is clean through to purple and maroon where it is hazardous, on the US EPA health scale. Tap the map for the local US and European AQI reading; runs forward along the forecast timeline.
What it shows
Air quality here means PM2.5 — fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns, about thirty times thinner than a human hair. These are the smoke, dust and haze particles small enough to travel deep into the lungs and bloodstream, which is why PM2.5 is the pollutant most closely tied to health harm and usually the one that drives a high Air Quality Index during wildfire smoke or heavy pollution. The field is painted worldwide from the Copernicus CAMS global-atmosphere model.
How to read it
Clean air reads green and stays faint, letting the map show through; as particle concentrations climb the field warms through gold and orange to red, then deepens to purple and dark maroon where the air is genuinely hazardous. The colour steps follow the US EPA health bands, so a shift from gold to orange is the same jump from Moderate to Unhealthy-for-Sensitive-Groups you would read on an AQI scale. Tap the map for the local US and European AQI value. Because the pollutants are invisible, the sky can look clear while the field reads unhealthy — that is normal, especially in thin, wide-spread smoke.
SEE IT LIVE
Open the full weather console with air quality on, then stack other overlays and scrub the forecast.