Air Quality API overview

The Air Quality API lets you request air quality data for a specific location, including over 70 air quality indexes (AQIs), pollutants, and health recommendations. It covers over 100 countries with a resolution of 500 x 500 meters.

Why use the Air Quality API

The API provides endpoints that let you query:

  • Current Conditions: Real-time hourly air quality information.
  • Hourly History: Air quality history for a specific location, for a given time range, up to a maximum of 30 days.
  • Heatmaps: Color coded tiles of various indexes and pollutants.

Features of the Air Quality API

  • Real-time air quality indexes and categories: The Air Quality API continuously calculates the value of various air quality indexes with 500 x 500 meters resolution.
  • Health recommendations: Hundreds of research-backed health recommendations for the general public and sensitivity groups including: children, elderly, pregnant women, athletes and those with asthma or heart conditions.
  • Pollutant details: In-depth information about different pollutants, highlighting the dominant pollutant, concentrations, sources and effects.
  • Hourly history: Air quality history for a specific location for a given time range. Each response potentially includes hourly air quality indexes, pollutant data, and health recommendations for a maximum of 720 hours (30 days).
  • Heatmaps: Heatmaps are a collection of AQ indexes and pollutants image tiles that can be displayed on top of a Google Map.

How the Air Quality API works

The Air Quality API has the following methods:

  • currentConditions: The currentConditions endpoint provides current hourly air quality information.

  • history: The history endpoint provides historical hourly air quality information for a specific location, for a given time range, up to a maximum of 30 days.

  • heatmapTiles: The heatmapTiles endpoint provides air quality related heatmaps through a tile overlay.

Air Quality API country and region coverage

See Air Quality API supported countries and available AQIs for the latest coverage details, on a country-by-country basis, for which air quality information (AQI) and local air quality information (LAQI) is available.

How to use the Air Quality API

1 Get set up Start with Set up your Google Cloud project and complete the instructions that follow.
2 Get current hourly air quality information See Current conditions.
3 Get hourly air-quality history See History.
4 Get air quality related heatmaps through a tile overlay See Heatmaps.

What's next