With smoky air still making its way through the Palouse, an updated WSU web tool is helping to track and more accurately predict air quality in the region.
The Air Indicator Report for Public Awareness and Community Tracking, or AIRPACT6, provides 72-hour, close-to-home air-quality forecasts across the Pacific Northwest.
Users can enter a location to generate a three-day rolling forecast down to a 4-kilometer grid square.
The updated interactive map is part of a broader series of improvements to the Air Indicator Report for Public Awareness and Community Tracking system, funded by the NW-AIRQUEST Consortium of agencies and universities across the three-state region. AIRPACT provides guidance to meteorologists, officials weighing burn bans or health advisories, and the general public.
First launched in 2001 by WSU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, AIRPACT was among the earliest high-resolution air-quality forecasting tools in the country. The latest version was developed by Jun Meng, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, and PhD students in his Air Quality Research Lab, with Meng crediting students Priom Zarrah and Jahidul Islam for their contributions.
New features include hourly animation and daily air-quality index views, real-time observations from the EPA AirNOW network for comparison against forecasts, the ability to click anywhere on the map for a detailed time series, and a browsable archive of past forecasts.
Check the interactive map online here.
