Air Quality in Warwick, Rhode Island — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Warwick — with free alerts when ozone climbs or smoke rolls in off the bay.

Live Warwick AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Warwick and Cranston, West Warwick, East Greenwich, North Kingstown.

Most of the year, Warwick's air is genuinely unremarkable in the best way. The city's entire eastern edge sits on the water — the Providence River along its northern boundary, and Greenwich Bay further south, framed by the Warwick Neck and Potowomut peninsulas before Narragansett Bay opens out toward the Atlantic — and the sea breeze that builds most summer afternoons tends to clear pollution out before it can settle. The exceptions are a handful of hot, humid days each summer when ground-level ozone climbs across southern New England, and the rare summer, like 2023, when wildfire smoke drifts down from Canada and turns the sky over the bay hazy for days at a stretch.

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.

Warwick sits on the water, and that mostly keeps its air quiet

Warwick's whole eastern edge is waterfront. The Providence River forms its northern boundary, and further south Greenwich Bay is framed by two peninsulas, Warwick Neck and Potowomut, before Narragansett Bay opens out toward the Atlantic. The city sits low — about 20 feet above sea level — and borders Cranston to the north, West Warwick to the west, and East Greenwich to the south. Rhode Island's own air-quality forecast splits the state into western, Providence, and coastal zones, and Warwick's bay-facing geography puts it with the coastal towns, where the afternoon sea breeze usually keeps ozone from building the way it can further inland.

That same geography also puts T.F. Green, Rhode Island's main airport, inside Warwick's own city limits — a distinction none of the state's other large cities share. Aircraft taking off and landing add real combustion exhaust over the neighborhoods under its flight paths, and a $30 million runway repaving project running into late 2026 has been shifting traffic onto the airport's shorter crosswind runway, concentrating both noise and exhaust over different streets than usual. Even so, the airport is a minor contributor next to the region's two bigger drivers: summer ozone and the occasional wildfire-smoke event from far outside Rhode Island.

Summer ozone is the more familiar problem

Ground-level ozone forms when sunlight cooks vehicle and industrial exhaust on hot, still days, and Rhode Island sits at the tail end of the Boston-to-Washington corridor, downwind of a lot of other places' pollution. Kent County, which Warwick anchors as the county seat, earned a B grade for ozone in the American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report, covering 2022 through 2024 — a decent grade, but one that still reflects a handful of genuinely bad-air days most years rather than zero.

Washington County, just south along the same coastline, scored a C in the same report, a reminder that being near the water doesn't make a place immune to ozone — it just changes the odds. On the hot, hazy, low-wind days when the sea breeze fails to develop, Warwick's ozone can climb right along with the rest of southern New England, and that pattern is worth watching for far more than any single dramatic event.

June 2023: when Quebec's wildfires reached Narragansett Bay

Rhode Island doesn't usually deal with wildfire smoke, which is what made June 2023 stand out. Smoke from record wildfires burning near Quebec pushed south into New England, and the state's Department of Environmental Management issued back-to-back Air Quality Alerts for unhealthy fine particles on June 7 and again for a third straight day on June 9, urging residents to close their windows, avoid outdoor exertion, and consider N95 masks outdoors.

When DEM lifted the alert on the morning of June 9, it noted that southern Rhode Island — the part of the state that includes Warwick — had recorded the highest fine-particle readings before the plume finally moved offshore. A second, shorter round of Canadian smoke pushed alerts again on June 28 and 29. Neither event is the norm here, but both are a real example of why a place with generally good air still benefits from watching it, not assuming it.

Warwick air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Warwick right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Warwick, calculated from PurpleAir sensors across the city and updated continuously. The map below shows every live sensor, so you can check the reading closest to your own neighborhood.

Why did the sky turn hazy in Warwick during the summer of 2023?

Smoke from record wildfires burning near Quebec drifted down over southern New England for much of June 2023. Rhode Island's Department of Environmental Management issued back-to-back statewide Air Quality Alerts for unhealthy fine particles on June 7-9 and again on June 28-29, with southern Rhode Island — where Warwick sits — recording some of the highest readings before the plume finally moved offshore. It was one of the only times in recent memory that wildfire smoke, rather than local traffic or summer heat, drove the story here.

Does living near T.F. Green Airport affect the air I breathe?

Rhode Island's main airport sits inside Warwick's city limits, so residents under its flight paths deal with more aircraft exhaust and jet noise overhead than people in most other Rhode Island cities. It's a real, local combustion source, but it isn't what drives Warwick's worst air-quality days — summer ozone and the occasional wildfire-smoke event have a far bigger effect on the numbers than the airport does.

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.

Where does Canairy's Warwick data come from?

Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors across Warwick and nearby communities like Cranston and East Greenwich, cross-referenced with government monitors and the Google Air Quality API. You can see every sensor behind your numbers on the live map — there's no black box.

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.