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

The New York State Mesonet (NYSM) operates 37 meteorological stations within the New York City (NYC) Metropolitan Area. We designed and built a low-cost air quality (AQ) sensor package to measure carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrogen monoxide (NO), and particulate matter (PM2.5) at each of the NYSM sites. Sensor packages are mounted at roughly 2 m above the surface and utilize NYSM power and communications infrastructure. The AQ sensors are sampled every 5 seconds and data are retrieved hourly by NYSM servers at the University at Albany. Prior to deployment at field sites, the low-cost sensor packages were co-located for roughly 1 month with NYS Department of Environmental Conservation reference-grade instruments at Queens College in NYC. Data during the co-location period were used to determine calibration coefficients for each pollutant and package. An overview of the calibration algorithms and data processing will be given. Recalibrations of each package are planned to occur every 4-8 months. Full deployment of the AQ network with all sites instrumented is expected to be complete in September 2023. The high-density observational data will be used to determine spatial and temporal pollutant patterns with fine-scale resolution. A case study of the AQ network during the June 2023 Canadian wildlife event will be presented.