Combining Low-Cost Sensors with the New York State Mesonet for Continuous Fine-Scale Air Quality Monitoring in the New York City Metropolitan Area

A low-cost air quality sensor package to measure particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide, nitric oxide, and nitrogen dioxide was designed for integration with the New York State Mesonet (NYSM), an advanced weather monitoring network that has been continuously collecting observations since 2015. The low-cost sensors were calibrated using regulatory-grade instruments at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Queens College monitoring site. During spring, summer, and fall of 2023, sensor packages were deployed at 38 NYSM sites within the New York City Metropolitan Area (NYCMA). From May 2023 through August 2024, air pollutants were measured at a 5-s sampling period and collected remotely in real time, with data retention rates exceeding 90% for all pollutants across the network. Calibrated and quality-controlled hourly data demonstrate the capability of the network to characterize temporal pollutant patterns at daily, weekly, and seasonal time scales, to contrast pollutants in urban and rural environments, and to evaluate spatial correlations across the network. The study also highlights the network’s ability to resolve the impacts of episodic pollution events, such as the 2023 Quebec, Canada wildfires, on air quality across the NYCMA.