EEA (European Environment Agency)¶

The European Environment Agency aggregates regulatory air quality data reported by EU member states and cooperating countries under the Air Quality Directive. Hourly data is available from 2013 onwards across 40+ countries and 7,000+ stations.

Overview¶

Coverage: 40+ European countries, 7,000+ stations
Data quality: Reference (national regulatory networks, pooled by EEA)
Ratification: Verified (verified by EEA or member state) or Provisional (not yet verified)
API key: Not required
History: 2013+ (hourly)
Operator: European Environment Agency

No API Key Required¶

The EEA Air Quality Download Service is fully open. No registration or API key is needed.

Quick Start¶

import aeolus
from datetime import datetime

# Find EEA stations within 20 km of Paris
sites = aeolus.find_sites(
    "EEA",
    near=(48.8566, 2.3522),
    radius_km=20,
)

# Download NO2 and PM2.5 for January 2024
data = aeolus.download(
    "EEA",
    sites=sites["site_code"].head(5).tolist(),
    start_date=datetime(2024, 1, 1),
    end_date=datetime(2024, 1, 31),
)

Finding Stations¶

# By bounding box
sites = aeolus.find_sites(
    "EEA",
    bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60),  # (min_lon, min_lat, max_lon, max_lat) - Europe
)

# By country (via metadata filter)
sites = aeolus.networks.get_metadata("EEA")
germany = sites[sites["country"] == "DE"]

Data Quality¶

Each row is labelled with a ratification value derived from the EEA Verification field:

EEA field value	`ratification`
1 (Not yet verified)	`Provisional`
2 (Verified by EEA)	`Verified`
3 (Verified by member state)	`Verified`

For recent months, expect mostly Provisional data; for previous calendar years, most data is Verified.

Notes¶

No real-time: get_current() is not supported for EEA — the download API is not near-real-time. Use national sources (AURN, etc.) for live readings.
Dataset variant: Aeolus uses the E1a ("Verified") dataset for the broadest coverage of recent data.
Samplingpoint mapping: EEA Samplingpoint identifiers follow different conventions per country. Aeolus uses the EEA's own metadata CSV to map these to EoI station codes authoritatively.