Environment · Public data

Air quality in Europe, daily

PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and ozone at Europe's monitoring stations, day by day.

European Environment Agency, Air Quality download service (E2a, up-to-date data) · EEA standard re-use policy: CC BY 4.0 · commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_daily

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• 2,436,953rows
• The 39 countries reporting to the EEAcoverage
• Weeklyrefresh
• 10 Oct 2026last refreshed
• 30.8 MBtable size

Map Sample rows

Query it with DuckDB.

With an account Without an account

BashCopy

lhbox duckdb --catalog commons/pubdata

SQL · The worst PM2.5 days this year, with the station behind themCopy

SELECT d.date, s.station_name, s.municipality, s.country_code, round(d.mean, 1) AS pm25
FROM commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_daily AS d
JOIN commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_stations AS s USING (sampling_point_id)
WHERE d.pollutant = 'PM2.5' AND d.valid_hours >= 18
ORDER BY d.mean DESC LIMIT 20;

Read it where you work.

Public, read-only data. With an account, lhbox duckdb attaches the catalog as commons_pubdata; an agent with the LakehouseBox connector opens it with open_public_catalog("commons/pubdata"). Without one, DuckDB reads the public files directly.

Example queries

• The worst PM2.5 days this year, with the station behind them

  SELECT d.date, s.station_name, s.municipality, s.country_code, round(d.mean, 1) AS pm25
  FROM commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_daily AS d
  JOIN commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_stations AS s USING (sampling_point_id)
  WHERE d.pollutant = 'PM2.5' AND d.valid_hours >= 18
  ORDER BY d.mean DESC LIMIT 20;

• Days above the WHO 2021 daily guideline for NO2 (25 µg/m³) per country, traffic stations only

  SELECT s.country_code, count(*) AS station_days
  FROM commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_daily AS d
  JOIN commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_stations AS s USING (sampling_point_id)
  WHERE d.pollutant = 'NO2' AND s.station_type = 'traffic' AND d.valid_hours >= 18 AND d.mean > 25
  GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC;

Know your columns.

Column	Type	Meaning
date	date	the day (the measurement hours' start dates)
sampling_point_id	string	the EEA sampling point, <country>/SPO-… (joins air_quality_stations)
pollutant	string	PM2.5, PM10, NO2 or O3
pollutant_code	long	the EEA pollutant vocabulary code (6001, 5, 8, 7)
mean	double	mean of the day's valid hourly values
max	double	highest valid hourly value of the day

View all 8 columns

valid_hours	long	how many valid hourly values the day had (24 = complete)
unit	string	unit as reported, usually ug.m-3 (micrograms per cubic metre)

Join keys: sampling_point_id.

Companion tables

• commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_stations: one row per sampling point: station code and name, country, pollutant, coordinates, altitude, area (urban, suburban, rural) and type (traffic, industrial, background), municipality

Before you query.

1. Values are unverified (E2a): an isolated spike can be an instrument fault the verified release later removes.
2. Require valid_hours >= 18 (75 % of the day, the EU's own completeness rule) before comparing days or stations.
3. Join air_quality_stations for coordinates and for station_type (traffic, industrial, background) and area; comparing a traffic station with a rural background one is comparing different things.
4. Ozone peaks in summer afternoons, so its daily mean understates it: use max or a running 8-hour mean on the hourly source for health thresholds.

Source & licence.

Source

European Environment Agency, Air Quality download service (E2a, up-to-date data)

Licence

EEA standard re-use policy: CC BY 4.0

Attribution

© European Environment Agency (EEA), Air Quality e-Reporting (E2a, up-to-date, unverified).

Coverage

the 39 countries reporting to the EEA (EU-27, EFTA, the UK, the Western Balkans, Andorra, Gibraltar, Kosovo); 1 January of the current year to the latest reported day (the table restarts with each new year)

Refresh

weekly, the whole table replaced; source version eea e2a to 2026-10-10

Table

commons/pubdata · environment.air_quality_daily · Iceberg v2 · browse the catalog

Recipe

pubdata/recipes/air_quality.py, registry entry pubdata/registry/air_quality.yaml

Source: European Environment Agency, Air Quality download service (E2a, up-to-date data) · EEA standard re-use policy: CC BY 4.0 · Snapshot shown: 10 Oct 2026HTML for people. Markdown for agents.

# Air quality in Europe, daily

*PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and ozone at Europe's monitoring stations, day by day.*

Daily mean and maximum concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5), particles (PM10), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) at every station the European countries report to the European Environment Agency, from 1 January of the current year to the latest reported day, with the number of valid hours behind each value. A second table places every sampling point: station, coordinates, altitude, municipality and whether it measures traffic, industry or background.

## At a glance

| | |
|---|---|
| Table | `pubdata.environment.air_quality_daily` |
| Category | Environment · Environment, Air quality, Europe, Health |
| Rows | 2,436,953 |
| Size | 30.8 MB in 1 data file(s) |
| Iceberg format | v2 |
| Last refreshed | 2026-10-10T10:48:41Z |
| Source version | eea e2a to 2026-10-10 |
| Refresh cadence | weekly (replace) |
| Coverage | the 39 countries reporting to the EEA (EU-27, EFTA, the UK, the Western Balkans, Andorra, Gibraltar, Kosovo); 1 January of the current year to the latest reported day (the table restarts with each new year) |

## Origin

- **Source:** [European Environment Agency, Air Quality download service (E2a, up-to-date data)](https://eeadmz1-downloads-webapp.azurewebsites.net/)
- **Licence:** EEA standard re-use policy: CC BY 4.0
- **Attribution:** © European Environment Agency (EEA), Air Quality e-Reporting (E2a, up-to-date, unverified).
- **Note:** E2a data are reported by the countries hourly and are not yet validated (the verified E1a set follows the year after). ~10,000 sampling-point files (~2.3 GB) are read each refresh and reduced to daily values (a few tens of MB).

- **Recipe:** `pubdata/recipes/air_quality.py` in the LakehouseBox repository; registry entry `pubdata/registry/air_quality.yaml`.

## Schema

| column | type | description |
|---|---|---|
| `date` | date | the day (the measurement hours' start dates) |
| `sampling_point_id` | string | the EEA sampling point, <country>/SPO-… (joins air_quality_stations) |
| `pollutant` | string | PM2.5, PM10, NO2 or O3 |
| `pollutant_code` | long | the EEA pollutant vocabulary code (6001, 5, 8, 7) |
| `mean` | double | mean of the day's valid hourly values |
| `max` | double | highest valid hourly value of the day |
| `valid_hours` | long | how many valid hourly values the day had (24 = complete) |
| `unit` | string | unit as reported, usually ug.m-3 (micrograms per cubic metre) |

**Join keys:** `sampling_point_id`.

## Companion tables

- `pubdata.environment.air_quality_stations`: one row per sampling point: station code and name, country, pollutant, coordinates, altitude, area (urban, suburban, rural) and type (traffic, industrial, background), municipality (34,184 rows)

## For agents

Values are unverified (E2a): an isolated spike can be an instrument fault the verified release later removes. Require
`valid_hours >= 18` (75 % of the day, the EU's own completeness rule) before comparing days or stations. Join
`air_quality_stations` for coordinates and for `station_type` (traffic, industrial, background) and `area`; comparing
a traffic station with a rural background one is comparing different things. Ozone peaks in summer afternoons, so its
daily mean understates it: use `max` or a running 8-hour mean on the hourly source for health thresholds.

## Example SQL (DuckDB)

```sql
-- the worst PM2.5 days this year, with the station behind them
SELECT d.date, s.station_name, s.municipality, s.country_code, round(d.mean, 1) AS pm25
FROM pubdata.environment.air_quality_daily AS d
JOIN pubdata.environment.air_quality_stations AS s USING (sampling_point_id)
WHERE d.pollutant = 'PM2.5' AND d.valid_hours >= 18
ORDER BY d.mean DESC LIMIT 20;
-- days above the WHO 2021 daily guideline for NO2 (25 µg/m³) per country, traffic stations only
SELECT s.country_code, count(*) AS station_days
FROM pubdata.environment.air_quality_daily AS d
JOIN pubdata.environment.air_quality_stations AS s USING (sampling_point_id)
WHERE d.pollutant = 'NO2' AND s.station_type = 'traffic' AND d.valid_hours >= 18 AND d.mean > 25
GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC;
```

## How to read it

Without an account, over HTTPS (the bucket is public):

```sql
INSTALL iceberg; LOAD iceberg; INSTALL httpfs; LOAD httpfs;
-- anonymous: the bucket is public, requests go unsigned, through the public-data cache
CREATE OR REPLACE SECRET pubdata (TYPE S3, ENDPOINT 'lakehousebox-public-data.b-cdn.net', URL_STYLE 'path', REGION 'us-east-1');
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW air_quality_daily AS SELECT * FROM iceberg_scan('s3://commons--pubdata/environment/air_quality_daily');
SELECT * FROM air_quality_daily LIMIT 10;
```

With a LakehouseBox account:

```bash
# with a LakehouseBox account (any organisation): the public catalog by name, read-only
lhbox duckdb --catalog commons/pubdata     # opens DuckDB attached as `commons_pubdata`
SELECT * FROM commons_pubdata.environment.air_quality_daily LIMIT 10;
```

Public URL of the table's storage: `https://s3.lakehousebox.com/commons--pubdata/environment/air_quality_daily/`. This card: `https://lakehousebox.com/pubdata/cards/air_quality.md`; the page: https://lakehousebox.com/public-data/air_quality. Every dataset as a table: `commons_pubdata.meta.datasets`; as Markdown: https://lakehousebox.com/public-data.md.