NOAA AQM/NAQFC air-quality forecasts are now on GribStream

GribStream now supports NOAA/NCEP Air Quality Model (AQM/NAQFC) ozone and PM2.5 forecast guidance as three queryable datasets:

• AQM CONUS
• AQM Alaska
• AQM Hawaii

For customers, the useful change is API access to regional air-quality forecast data. Applications can request pollutant guidance by coordinate, time range, and selector in the same workflow they already use for NBM, HRRR, GFS, GEFS Chem, or UVI.

What AQM Adds

NOAA's AQM/NAQFC distribution provides operational air-quality forecast guidance for:

• ozone concentration (OZCON)
• fine particulate matter (PMTF, PM2.5)

The GribStream catalog includes hourly products and 8-hour average products. CONUS also includes bias-corrected variants when NOAA publishes them in the current source data. The regional datasets stay separate because each one uses its own native domain:

• aqm for the 5 km CONUS Lambert domain
• aqmak for the Alaska polar stereographic domain
• aqmhi for the 2.5 km Hawaii Mercator domain

That separation matters for real products. A CONUS exposure model, an Alaska smoke-impact workflow, and an island-scale Hawaii air-quality dashboard should not have to treat three different regional products as one generic layer.

How This Differs From Weather Models

AQM is not a replacement for NBM, HRRR, or GFS. Those datasets describe the meteorological state: temperature, wind, clouds, precipitation, pressure, and related weather fields.

AQM is the pollutant forecast layer. It is a better fit when the product question is about ozone, PM2.5, environmental exposure, outdoor operations, or health-adjacent risk scoring.

It also complements GEFS Chem and UVI. GEFS Chem is useful for broader atmospheric-composition context and ensemble-style chemical/aerosol workflows. UVI is focused on ultraviolet exposure. AQM sits in the operational regional air-quality lane, with native regional grids and lead times that are directly useful for forecast products.

What This Enables

AQM in GribStream is useful for:

• air-quality dashboards and public-health applications
• exposure scoring by latitude/longitude and forecast hour
• joining PM2.5 or ozone guidance with NBM, HRRR, RAP, or GFS weather drivers
• smoke and pollution context for outdoor work, schools, logistics, travel, and energy operations
• short-window replay for incidents that are still inside the retained recent-data window

Use the AQM model pages to choose the exact name, level, and info selector values for the regional domain you need, then use those values in your existing GribStream queries.

Sources

• AQM CONUS model page: /models/aqm
• AQM Alaska model page: /models/aqmak
• AQM Hawaii model page: /models/aqmhi
• NOAA NOMADS AQM data: https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/aqm/prod/
• NOAA Air Quality Forecast Guidance: https://airquality.weather.gov/