The Dataset of Daily Air Quality for the Years 2013-2023 in Italy

Abstract

Air quality and climate are major issues in Italian society and lie at the intersection of many research fields, including public health and policy planning. There is an increasing need for readily available, easily accessible, ready-to-use and well-documented datasets on air quality and climate. In this paper, we present the GRINS AQCLIM dataset, created under the GRINS project framework covering the Italian domain for an extensive time period. It includes daily statistics (e.g., minimum, quartiles, mean, median and maximum) for a collection of air pollutant concentrations and climate variables at the locations of the 700+ available monitoring stations. Input data are retrieved from the European Environmental Agency and Copernicus Programme and were subjected to multiple processing steps to ensure their reliability and quality. These steps include automatic procedures for fixing raw files, manual inspection of stations information, the detection and removal of anomalies, and the temporal harmonisation on a daily basis. Datasets are hosted on Zenodo under open-access principles.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Spatial localisation of the air quality monitoring network in the GRINS_ AQCLIM dataset. Station type refers to the predominant emission sources, while Station area indicates the prevalent surrounding land-use context.
• Figure 2: Flow diagram for the automatic fix of duplication issues in raw air quality files from the EEA.
• Figure 3: PM${2.5}$ Histograms of observations exceeding the 99.99% percentiles. Colours according on the monitoring station.
• Figure 4: NO$_2$: Comparison of nitrogen dioxide concentrations provided by the Agrimonia and GRINS_ AQCLIM. Data for Milan city centre. RMSE = 0.8 $\mu g/m^3$.
• Figure 5: Temperature: Comparison of data provided by regional agency (from ground-based monitoring station) and data contained in the GRINS_ AQCLIM (from ERA5 dataset) for Como city. RMSE = 1.32 °C.