Air Quality in Ottawa, Ontario — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Ottawa — with free alerts the moment the air turns.

Live Ottawa AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Ottawa and Gatineau, Kanata, Orléans, Barrhaven.

Ottawa's air is unremarkable most of the year, and then there was June 2023. On the morning of Tuesday 6 June, Ontario's Ottawa Downtown monitor sat at 10+ on the Air Quality Health Index, the top of the scale, from 7 a.m. straight through to 10 a.m. The underlying calculation ran to 14, double the level at which Environment and Climate Change Canada issues a statement at all. Fine particulate matter measured 267 micrograms per cubic metre at 8 a.m., more than twice what Delhi was breathing that day, and Ottawa had the worst air of any major city in Ontario. Monica Vaswani, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said it was, in some ways, off the charts.

Canairy watches the sensors around your home, your kids' school, and everywhere else you care about, and tells you in plain English when the air changes enough to matter.

The smoke that reached Ottawa in 2023 came from both sides of the river

The fires burning that week were in and around eastern Ontario and western Quebec, and the wind did the rest. Vaswani warned that northeasterly winds would keep pushing smoke toward the capital, which is why the bad air held rather than passing through in an afternoon. It came back later in the month too, when plumes from fires further north in Quebec drifted down over the region again and pushed the index back to 10+ on a Sunday morning in late June.

The response on the ground was immediate and local. The Ottawa Catholic School Board cancelled a track meet, and the Upper Canada District School Board called off outdoor extracurriculars and kept students inside at recess. Birgit Isernhagen of Ottawa Public Health gave about the plainest advice you will hear from a health unit: if you are doing lots of activity outside and you notice you are dizzy or you cannot breathe, stop what you are doing and go into a space with closed windows and air conditioning.

Ontario runs exactly one air quality monitor in Ottawa

The province's Air Quality Ontario network lists a single station for the city, Ottawa Downtown, station 51001. That one instrument is the source of the hourly AQHI the province publishes and archives for the capital, and it is a good instrument. It is also downtown, and Ottawa is not. The city runs from Kanata in the west to Orléans in the east, with Barrhaven and Riverside South well to the south of the core and Gatineau across the river in another province entirely.

On a day when smoke is arriving on a steady wind, a single number is close enough for everyone. On the more common days, when the air is fine in one part of town and a neighbour is burning damp wood in another, it is not. That gap is the whole reason to read sensors near the addresses you actually use rather than one figure for the region.

When nothing is burning, Ottawa Public Health names two sources

Ottawa Public Health points at residential wood burning and traffic-related air pollution as the local contributors worth doing something about. It attributes roughly 2,300 premature deaths a year in Canada to residential wood smoke and about 1,200 to traffic-related air pollution, using 2015 figures, and its position on the first is blunt: Ottawa Public Health does not recommend burning wood or other biomass for any reason in built-up areas. That is stronger language than most Canadian health units use.

On traffic, the guidance is about distance. Exposure to traffic-related pollution falls off sharply once you are 50 to 100 metres from a busy road, which is a useful thing to know if you are choosing where a child sleeps or where you run. Neither of these sources produces a dramatic sky. They produce a number that is quietly higher than it needs to be, on the street where you live, which is exactly what a nearby sensor is good at showing.

Ottawa air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Ottawa today?

In summer it is almost always wildfire smoke carried in on the wind, usually from fires in northern or western Quebec or in eastern Ontario, rather than from anything burning near the city. That was the pattern in June 2023, when smoke from fires in and around eastern Ontario and western Quebec pushed the downtown index to the top of the scale for hours at a time. Outside fire season, a smoky smell on a cold, still evening is more likely to be a neighbourhood wood stove or fireplace. The live reading on this page will tell you which kind of day it is far faster than trying to judge by eye.

What is the air quality in Ottawa right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Ottawa, calculated from PurpleAir sensors across the city and updated continuously. Ottawa covers a lot of ground, so the map below is worth a look rather than the headline number alone: the reading in Kanata and the reading in Orléans can differ on the same afternoon, and Gatineau sits across the river in a different province's monitoring network.

Canada reports the AQHI, so why does this page show a different number?

Environment and Climate Change Canada publishes the Air Quality Health Index, a 1 to 10+ scale built from three pollutants measured together: fine particulate matter, ground-level ozone and nitrogen dioxide. PurpleAir sensors measure fine particulate matter only, so an AQHI cannot honestly be calculated from them. This page shows the US EPA AQI instead, which is derived from PM2.5 directly and is the scale most air quality apps use. It is not an AQHI and Canairy does not present it as one. For the official AQHI for Ottawa, Environment Canada and Air Quality Ontario are the sources.

How bad did Ottawa's air actually get in June 2023?

On the morning of 6 June 2023 the Ottawa Downtown monitor read 10+ on the AQHI from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., with the underlying calculation reaching 14, twice the threshold at which Environment and Climate Change Canada issues an air quality statement. Fine particulate matter hit 267 micrograms per cubic metre at 8 a.m., more than double Delhi's level that day, and Ottawa had the worst air of any major Ontario city. School boards cancelled outdoor activities and kept children in at recess.

What AQI level is unhealthy?

Under the US EPA scale, AQI 0–50 is Good and 51–100 is Moderate. From 101 the air is Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups — kids, older adults, and people with asthma or heart conditions — and above 150 it's Unhealthy for everyone. Canairy translates these numbers into a plain-English verdict, like whether to close the windows or move a workout indoors.

Is Canairy free?

Yes. The Canairy app is free to download and includes live air quality for all your saved places, plain-English verdicts, and free push alerts when the air crosses your threshold. A paid plan adds extras like SMS text alerts.

Get Canairy free on Google Play.