Air quality in Velas
Região Autónoma dos Açores · all municipalities
No modelled values here
Velas 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 Velas 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 |
42 km west |
The nearest station with usable data is 42 km away. At that distance it describes a region, not this place, and for nitrogen dioxide it says almost nothing about a particular street.
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.
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.