Ministère de l’Environnement, de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs
Search Quebec.ca
This content is intended for the public covered by the exceptions of the Charter of the French language and its regulations. If you read on, you confirm that you fall within one of these exceptions.

Annual regional air quality index statistics for 2008

In 2008, two new weather regions, La Tuque and Mont-Laurier, were added to the list of regions for which an AQI was calculated. This therefore brought the number of regions to 24, since the Montréal Island is divided into 4 subregions.

The percentage of days for which the AQI was deemed “good” varied between 80.1% on the Montréal Island (approximately 293 days out of 366) and 100% in 7 regions (Abitibi, Témiscamingue, Haute-Gatineau, Lac-Saint-Jean, Saguenay, Rivière-du-Loup and Témiscouata).

Air quality was deemed “poor*” the most often in Montréal (19.9% of the time, or 73 days out of 366, which was twice as high as the previous year). In terms of hours, this was 5.3% (465 hours out of 8782 valid hours).

Compared to the previous year, there was a decline in the percentage of days where the air quality was “poor*” for most regions (between 0.5% and 2.2%), except on the Montréal Island where the percentage rose.

In Montréal, there was a larger percentage of days and hours when air quality was “poor*” because fine particles is now measured using a new generation of devices. These results therefore cannot be interpreted as a deterioration of air quality compared to the previous year.

The further away a region is from Montréal, the better the air quality, regardless of direction.

* Occurs where the concentration of fine particles is above at least 35 µg/m3 (over a three-hour period) or the hourly ozone concentration is above at least 82 ppb at at least one station in the region.


Return to the top