Metadata for every AirNow reporting area: its location, time zone, agency,
and the rules AirNow uses to pick monitors for it. Reporting-area codes
are the area argument to get_airnow_observations(),
get_airnow_forecasts(), and get_airnow_forecast_history().
Format
A tibble with 1,036 rows and 14 columns:
- reporting_area
Area name. Not unique: 26 names appear in more than one state (e.g. Aberdeen, SD and Aberdeen, WA).
- state_code
Two-letter state or province code
- country_code
Two-letter country code (US, CA, MX)
- latitude, longitude
Representative point, decimal degrees
- gmt_offset
Standard-time offset from UTC, in hours. AirNow's source rounds fractional offsets to whole hours; known half- and quarter-hour zones are corrected in this dataset.
- observes_dst
Whether the area observes daylight saving time
- tz_standard, tz_daylight
Time zone abbreviations as AirNow records them. Some are non-standard (Anchorage:
AKT/ADT).- reporting_area_code
Unique code, e.g.
"ca064"- agency
Agency responsible for the area
- lookup_behavior
How AirNow picks monitors, e.g.
"Closest Reading By Pollutant"- considered_monitors
Which monitors are eligible
- lookup_boundary
Search radius, e.g.
"50 miles";NAwhen AirNow leaves it blank
Source
AirNow reporting area metadata,
https://files.airnowtech.org/airnow/today/reportingarea_metadata.dat,
retrieved 2026-09-12. AirNow is a partnership of the U.S. EPA, NOAA,
NPS, tribal, state, and local agencies; the file is published without
access restrictions. One exact duplicate row (Monterrey, mx002) was
removed. Rebuild with data-raw/airnow_areas.R.