Air quality in Madalena
Região Autónoma dos Açores · all municipalities
No modelled values here
Madalena falls outside the domain of the 1 km European air quality maps, which stop at the European mainland. There is no modelled annual value and therefore no rating for anywhere in this concelho. That is a gap in the data, not a statement that the air is good or bad.
Thirty Portuguese municipalities — all of them in the Azores and Madeira — are in this position.
What the monitors near Madalena have measured
These are real measurements from the nearest official monitoring stations. A station a few kilometres away can differ a lot from a specific street, especially for nitrogen dioxide, which falls off sharply away from traffic.
Fine particles under 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5)
Not plotted: Faial 2026 — the year is not over — 68% of its hours so far, not yet a comparable annual mean; Faial 2024 — only 49% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2023 — only 66% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2022 — only 56% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2020 — only 71% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2018 — only 72% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; and 1 more.
Coarse particles under 10 micrometres (PM10)
Not plotted: Faial 2026 — the year is not over — 68% of its hours so far, not yet a comparable annual mean; Faial 2025 — only 46% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2024 — only 53% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2022 — only 59% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown.
Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂)
Not plotted: Faial 2026 — the year is not over — 58% of its hours so far, not yet a comparable annual mean; Faial 2025 — only 18% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2022 — only 54% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown.
Ozone (O₃)
Not plotted: Faial 2026 — the year is not over — 68% of its hours so far, not yet a comparable annual mean; Faial 2024 — only 53% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2022 — only 67% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown; Faial 2021 — only 49% of the year's hours were valid, under the 75% the EU requires for an annual mean; treated as unknown.
This is the annual mean of the hourly ozone measurements. The EU target value of 120 µg/m³ is written against a different statistic — the daily maximum 8-hour mean — so it is not drawn here. Ozone behaves unlike the others: it is destroyed by fresh traffic exhaust, so a busy street often reads lower than the countryside around it.
The stations these come from
| Station | Kind of site | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Faial Horta (Ilha do Faial) |
background rural |
18 km north-west |
A traffic station sits beside a busy road and reads the worst case; a background station reads what the area as a whole breathes; an industrial one sits near a plant. Which kind you are looking at matters more than the distance.
MEASURED — hourly observations reported by Portugal to the European Environment Agency, aggregated here into annual means. A year is charted only if at least 75% of its hours are valid, the threshold the EU sets for an annual mean, and only if the value is physically plausible; anything excluded is listed under its chart with the reason rather than dropped. Station names and locations come from APA's QualAr register; station type and setting from the EEA's station metadata. Verified data through 2025; the most recent year is provisional and not yet verified.
How it changes through the year
PM2.5 peaks in January at 4.2 µg/m³ and bottoms out in May at 2.5, a factor of 1.7. PM10 peaks in February at 10.1 µg/m³ and bottoms out in July at 6.0, a factor of 1.7. NO₂ peaks in January at 2.3 µg/m³ and bottoms out in November at 1.4, a factor of 1.6. O₃ peaks in April at 83.1 µg/m³ and bottoms out in July at 47.9, a factor of 1.7.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PM2.5 | 4.2 | 4.2 | 3.1 | 2.8 | 2.5 | 3.0 | 2.6 | 2.9 | 3.2 | 3.6 | 2.8 | 2.9 |
| PM10 | 7.6 | 10.1 | 9.3 | 7.9 | 7.5 | 7.0 | 6.0 | 6.7 | 8.7 | 8.6 | 8.2 | 6.9 |
| NO₂ | 2.3 | 1.8 | 1.6 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.5 | 1.7 | 1.6 | 1.4 | 1.4 | 1.6 |
| O₃ | 78.9 | 80.1 | 82.4 | 83.1 | 73.8 | 57.8 | 47.9 | 55.2 | 65.5 | 71.4 | 70.4 | 77.1 |
MEASURED — Faial (background, 18 km away), each calendar month averaged over 2022 onwards, µg/m³. A month is used only if at least 400 of its hours are valid.
Particles run highest in the cold months, when domestic wood burning coincides with still air that does not disperse it. An annual mean hides that entirely. Ozone runs highest in summer, because sunlight is what makes it. It is also the one pollutant a busy street has less of than the countryside around it, since fresh traffic exhaust destroys it.
Known projects nearby
This is a hand-curated list with sources, not a forecast and not a model. We have not estimated how much any of these would change the air. The list is small and certainly incomplete: it holds 15 entries for the whole country. Anything genuinely local — a quarry, a new estate road, a planning application — will not be here, and a buyer should still ask the council.
Nothing on our list is within 15 km of here. That means nothing we have written down, not that nothing is planned — see the caution below.
Sources and what they cannot tell you
- Measured history — European Environment Agency Air Quality Download Service: 19,038,066 validated hourly observations from Portugal's 71 stations, 2013–2026. Station names from APA QualAr. A station is not your street. Nitrogen dioxide in particular varies by hundreds of per cent over a few hundred metres.
- Modelled values at the address — the EEA / ETC-HE 1 km European air quality maps, 2024 and the three years before it. A 1 km cell is an average over a square kilometre. It cannot see one side of a street being busier than the other, and it will understate a very local source and overstate a very local clean spot.
- Industry — European Industrial Emissions Portal, reporting year 2024, as declared by operators. Only installations above the European reporting thresholds appear. Emissions reported are annual totals: they say nothing about when, or which way the wind was blowing.
- Roads — OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Distance to a road class, not to traffic. A quiet primary road and a jammed one look identical here.
- Boundaries — CAOP (Carta Administrativa Oficial de Portugal, DGT), all 308 concelhos and the freguesias of the Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas.
- Known projects — curated by hand, each with a citation. Not a forecast. Incomplete by construction.
- Address lookup — OpenStreetMap Nominatim. A geocoder returns the coordinate it thinks you meant. Check the place name we echo back before trusting the figures.
- Not used — CAMS reanalysis, which would give hourly modelled history, needs a Copernicus Atmosphere Data Store key that this build does not have. Madeira and the Azores fall outside the 1 km European map domain, so those 30 municipalities have measured station data but no modelled values and no rating.
Data built 2026-09-21. airhome is free and has no commercial relationship with anyone selling property.