Big (bad) news: the US Embassy air monitoring program webpage has been taken down: www.airnow.gov/internationa... This erases ~17 years of a critical data source at ~80 US diplomatic posts around the world. Critically for the health of thousands of foreign services officers, critical for research.. - ThreadSky

dwesty.bsky.social • 17 days ago

Big (bad) news: the US Embassy air monitoring program webpage has been taken down: https://www.airnow.gov/international/us-embassies-and-consulates/

This erases ~17 years of a critical data source at ~80 US diplomatic posts around the world. Critically for the health of thousands of foreign services officers, critical for research..

Comments

juliannc.bsky.social•17 days ago

infuriating.

balupuppy.bsky.social•17 days ago

🤦🏻‍♂️🤬

zhonghuazheng.bsky.social•17 days ago

Bad news…

dangbeck.bsky.social•17 days ago

You’re welcome, Beijing, and every other 1st and 2d line city in China

jacquirickard.bsky.social•17 days ago

Oh no, I hope it come back. This is a great resource

russbiggs.com•17 days ago

This is a terrifying sign of dismantling AQ infrastructure. Fortunately, the data are still being reported at least as of one hour ago in most locations. We have all these locations on OpenAQ and will continue to keep it going as long as they are reported.

dwesty.bsky.social•17 days ago

We archived it all recently as well. This website change JUST happened maybe a couple hours ago (I've been religiously refreshing), so I wouldn't be surprised if they are turning off the hose in multiple places and just taking time to do that

dwesty.bsky.social•17 days ago

I should add that I received a tip yesterday that this was going to happen, so between that and the website change this morning, I figured it was happening

russbiggs.com•17 days ago

Thats good to know. I assumed with how everything is going the Dept of State AQ stuff would be the most susceptible and first to get removed.

speedysulu.bsky.social•17 days ago

This dismantling of all the data taxpayers have paid for is so infuriating. Just stealing and stealing and then they’ll come back to us with an inferior solution from a company maximizing profits for shareholders using that data and charging a ridiculous subscription fee for using it.

ruaraidh.bsky.social•17 days ago

This is such a waste - the programme was principally aimed at embassy staff and other US citizens anyway! A huge loss for advocates and researchers.

dwesty.bsky.social•17 days ago

and critical for air quality data availability for many countries that were otherwise lacking high quality data

dwesty.bsky.social•17 days ago

I have been involved in this program for many years and have published many papers, done many presentations, etc with the dataset so this is really disturbing to see

dwesty.bsky.social•17 days ago

The cost savings from this will be minuscule as well

dwesty.bsky.social•17 days ago

As of now the ZephAir app still works (?), maybe DOGE hasn't found out about that yet.

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