AQI is showing wrong readings

[jitendersaini]

It's very great to see AQI feature but surprisingly it is not aligned with my geography and showing huge differences in reading. The current AQI index at my location is 100 to 150 whereas cloak is showing 1008 that is 10 times than the actual reading. Is there any configuration missed at my end or this API is buggy?

[kshetline]

If there's something wrong here, it's in the weather data service that I'm using. Here's a link to that service with your latitude and longitude filled in:

https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/air-quality-api?longitude=77.0264&latitude=28.4601&hourly=pm10,pm2_5,carbon_monoxide,sulphur_dioxide,ozone,nitrogen_dioxide,european_aqi,us_aqi,european_aqi_pm2_5,european_aqi_pm10,european_aqi_nitrogen_dioxide,european_aqi_ozone,european_aqi_sulphur_dioxide,us_aqi_pm2_5,us_aqi_pm10,us_aqi_nitrogen_dioxide,us_aqi_carbon_monoxide,us_aqi_ozone,us_aqi_sulphur_dioxide&current=european_aqi,us_aqi,pm10,pm2_5,nitrogen_dioxide,sulphur_dioxide,ozone

I see a chart there that looks like this:

Both the US and European AQI numbers are very, very high (and headed to even worse levels in the next few days). The number you're displaying in your screen shot is the US AQI number. The European number is about half that, if perhaps that's more in line with what you're expecting. You can change the settings of the clock to use the European system instead.

The European number is only smaller, however, because the scale uses of different range of numbers, not because it's indicating better air quality.

[jitendersaini]

Thanks for the response. Yes I know in this case API is giving data but I'm trying to understand the AQI units US standard or EU standard both are very different than the one is published by most the weather forecast portals like https://www.accuweather.com/en/in/gurgaon/188408/air-quality-index/188408. I'm not sure if this APi is publishing correct data for other locations.

[kshetline]

I struggled with choosing one particular API over another because it was hard to find agreement among the various services available. And that, of course, does make it hard to know what and whom to trust.

These are what the numbers, US and European, are supposed to mean:

This chart only shows one pollutant category, but the AQI number ranges are the same for different pollutants even if the per-pollutant measurements vary.

Open-Meteo seemed to be fairly consistent, often agree with other services I tried, and seldom being the outlier. Of course, it also has the great advantage of not requiring an API key or subscription until you hit very high requests levels.