Beijing 2015 PM2.5 AQI Summary

After going to the work of writing up all these pages, I decided it would be better to generate the data dynamically. This way arbitrary time periods can be compared, new data can be compared without my having to remake charts manually, and also I got to learn about using google charts. These pages are still useful to compare past years, but you can get all the same results and more at my new page.

Display results for

Go to the AQI reporting page

The results for the last few years are:
year average high low median lowest high highest low missing
2010 166.02 817 4 163.00 53 349 669
2011 159.50 562 8 159.00 61 438 728
2012 150.50 826 4 158.00 21 398 525
2013 162.27 755 8 158.00 36 390 304
2014 158.55 613 8 160.00 46 413 108
2015 142.05 646 4 147.00 38 460 116

There was a serious drop in overall average from 2014 despite a horrible last 6 weeks to the year.
This is a good sign, 2016 should show if this is a random blip or if some real progress
has been made. Five of the top ten months since 2010, ranked by
lowest average, occurred in 2015.

Beijing 2015 Daily Levels

The first chart shows the high, average, and low values for every day of the year. The data can be downloaded from here or viewed in table form here

Compare this graph for all years

Distribution

The following table gives the relative percentages that readings were in the given ranges.
That is, the green bar represents the number of readings in the range 1-50, the yellow bar
51-100, and so on. This shows the relative frequency of the different levels.

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Green Air Days

China often summarizes the results by citing "green air days". I am not exactly sure how they
compute those, so I am doing it by counting days where the maximum recorded value is less than
the range number. Days with no readings are not included, but there may be days where only one
or two readings were recorded. The easiest way to make sense of this chart is by noticing the
rotation of the red area year by year.

Compare this graph for all years

Monthly summary

First, here is the monthly data summary for the year:
month average high low median lowest high highest low missing
01/01/15 162.45 545 21 166.5 70 261 6
02/01/15 151.83 438 17 157 63 253 6
03/01/15 148.01 368 8 160 55 226 49
04/01/15 146.94 646 4 157 84 185 9
05/01/15 127.01 311 25 137 89 160 4
06/01/15 115.51 308 8 117 76 162 18
07/01/15 126.55 201 13 140.5 93 157 2
08/01/15 105.87 195 13 99 74 164 1
09/01/15 103.12 256 4 87 53 167 3
10/01/15 125.00 405 4 97 38 326 8
11/01/15 184.19 609 21 167 76 295 0
12/01/15 208.86 588 4 183 42 460 10
Full year 142.05 646 4 147.00 38 460 116

To compare rankings for all months, select a category and hit "go":

Next is the same data presented graphically:

Compare this graph for all years

On a really bad day the low AQI value will be high, and conversely on a good day the high AQI value will
be low. The next graph shows the highest low and the lowest high for each month, along with the high and low
values for context (these are the same values as in the previous graph)

Compare this graph for all years

Each Month

Following is the high/average/low chart for each month. This is the same information as in the first
graph, but being larger makes it easier to see. To compare an individual month over the years of the
data select it from here: